The living room

Okay, okay, I hear you.  I’ll start posting photos.  Not all at once, but as the rooms take shape.

Today, we’ll start with the living room, which is more or less unpacked and complete.  We haven’t hung much on the walls, but I’m guessing it’s the furniture you’re more interested in.

The living room is 12′ x 24′ and has huge windows on three sides that face northwest, southwest, and southeast.  We wanted to take advantage of all that sunlight, which is why we have so many windows.  Consequently, this is a very sunny, warm room right now.  This summer, we’ll have the benefit of trees to provide shade and cut down on the heat gain.

Here’s a view from the door from the kitchen, looking toward the back:

The rug is FLOR — Toy Poodle in black, Shirt Stripe in Button Down, and Take a Ribbing in sand.  The coffee table is a 1950s hand-me-down from Pete’s parents — an Asian-inspired brass top and a rattan base that we painted black a couple of years ago.  The side table on the right is a Civil War-era pine dry sink that we got from Pete’s parents when we were first married.  What you can’t see in this photo is that we have bookshelves and a TV across from the furniture.  Also, if you want a clearer view of the Nelson Marshmallow sofa in the foreground, click here.  (No, we didn’t spend that kind of money on it; I like the photo and the content is interesting.)

Looking toward the front of the room, here’s a shot of my new favorite place:

Right now, this corner is a mess, as I’ve been working here and I have files for various projects scattered about.   I’d like to think I’ll keep this area tidier, but I doubt I will.  I haven’t decided what to do about the little red table, so for now it’s holding my work stuff.  Later on, it’s possible it will be moved to another room, but for now I like the shot of color it gives the room.

The rug is more FLOR.  (House Pet in three colors.)   The shelves, side table, and CD/DVD rack are from Ikea.  The chair  and ottoman are, ahem, vintage.  (As in, Pete saw them at a yard sale and brought them home for $50.  They’re probably from the early 1970’s and oh-so comfortable.  I love the butterscotch color of the leather.)  

A closer look at the CD/DVD rack:

We created this from 10 Lerberg racks.  Pete and I had been debating what to do with our hundreds of CDs and DVDs and had been planning to buy shelves.  When we saw a display of these racks at Ikea,   Pete had the brilliant idea to hang them as if they were one unit.  It took me all of an hour to get all 10 up.  We’re probably going to get a few more for future expansion.  And, at some point, we should probably actually organize and sort everything, as we just threw everything on the shelves last weekend just so that we could mark that task off our extensive projects list.

I mention all these details to show that, even though we live in a sleek modern house, we aren’t living with uncomfortable furniture.  Nor have we felt compelled to keep things of the same era and aesthetic.  We have an eclectic mix of antique and modern, but it all seems to work together just fine, mostly because our furniture is clean-lined and not too frou-frou.  Also, we tend to buy everything in the same colors — black and tan — so it all more or less matches.  Even our art is a funky hodge podge.  In the living room, for example, we have a pottery face (made by Pete’s aunt) on one wall and an oil painting of an early 20th century ship (bought for $5 at a preschool yard sale) on another wall.  They’re seemingly different, but the colors are similar to each other and also to the furniture in the room, so it all seems to work. 

That’s all I have for today.  I’ll post more photos soon.

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