House of M & Em: furniture flip

First living room arrangement

We have a conflicted relationship with our living room. While we instantly loved the cozy lodge feel of the beams and fireplace and we felt right at home, it’s got some design and aesthetic issues we grapple with every day.

1) The Layout

This is huge. If we were building this room, we would have put the fireplace against the blank west wall (where the TV sits) and added a window in the northwest corner and made the windows bigger on the north wall to let more light in. The previous owners had their TV in front of the right window (by the threshold between the living room and kitchen) and an L-shaped couch with the long arm running against the long, blank wall and the short arm cutting off the library doors. We didn’t want to block any light in this dark room and wanted open access to the library, so that arrangement wasn’t going to fly.

We debated putting the TV above the fireplace, but we didn’t like how our necks felt looking up all the time, and electronics gurus say it cuts the life of your TV (if you use your fireplace), so it didn’t seem like a good idea, despite it being the norm these days.

Our current arrangement works, for the most part, even though we have one couch blocking the flow between kitchen and living room. But it does feel crowded and we feel like there’s a better way that we haven’t tried yet.

We could put a couch up against the fireplace, so you walk straight to either couch and sit rather than walking around Blue, but it feels weird to turn your back on the brick elephant in the room. Of course, when we have a toddling kiddo, we figured putting a couch in front of those sharp edges is a baby-proofing measure we’d temporarily live with.

Another option was to move the TV to the southwest corner, currently randomly occupied by photographs and knicknacks on an Ikea shelf. We could point the TV in the corner, reduce our shelving to something smaller for the requisite TV gear, and maybe arrange the furniture on a diagonal. The room is very nearly square (the length is about four inches longer than the width), and we won’t know until we try how it’ll work. I played with some floor planning software, but we really didn't know if it would work.

So, Friday night, we got a work out moving furniture around. Working on the diagonal was just weird and awkward, so we scraped it and tried the parallel couch option.

Ignore the random art on the wall. We're working the decorating thing.
The Ikea shelf in the corner will also be removed when we find something smaller to go there.

It instantly opened up the space and made the room feel larger. We played around with some spacing and end table arrangements, but finally settled on the above layout for awhile. But, like anything, there are some caveats.

We block the fireplace.
All the light comes from the fireplace wall.
The TV is off-center from the trim beams.
We can sprawl on the couches to face the TV, but with company, everyone will get cricks in their necks.

The blocked fireplace isn't a big deal right now, but what about using it in the winter? We think we'll wind up getting two rocking/reclining comfy chairs and move the blue couch up to the master bedroom.

So, roughly like this:

Chairs Living Room on Living Room With Sofas Around A Stone Fireplace Wall Is Very

So, imagine the TV where those double windows are on the left, and you can swivel the chairs around however you want. Obviously, our room won't look like this, since we'd have to gut it and we love our beams. But you get the idea. It also opens up our color palette for the room, once you knock out the sky blue couch.

Our chairs will likely be Flexsteel's Charisma swivel rocker, the one I had a hard time not buying when we were shopping for the library chair. They are just too fun and comfy, even if they're not interesting design choices.

No idea what our fabric choice would be.

The upside of the current arrangement? It downplays the brick elephant. Which leads us to layout issue #2.

2) The Fireplace

The big kahuna. It’s orange. It’s the same orange brick Mike grumbles about on our exterior.

Closing day

It’s not my favorite brick, either, but I’m not as bothered by it on the outside. Inside, however, it covers the entire north wall of the living room and really dominates the space and any design choices we want to make. It’s probably why we haven’t done anything other than move in our furniture and throw some stuff on the mantle.

One solution is to paint it. Yep, paint the brick. On the Internet, you have two camps: PAINT IT!!!! and SACRILEGE!!!!

http://creativesummercamp.files.wordpress.com/

Painting brick can definitely brighten and update a space, but sometimes you can lose the character of the space. We don’t really care about re-sale value right now and want to make choices that we enjoy, because why the heck did we buy a house to fix up? But it’s good to keep in mind classic vs. trendy when making decisions. Pinterest has tons of examples of painted fireplaces.

Another (albeit dramatic) solution would be to wall in around the windows to reduce the amount of brick. This would be a steep jump in DIY skills, especially because we would also need to continue the trim, so it looks original to the house. It would also reduce some of the square footage and make the windows “sunken in.” It would be easier to paint the fireplace, but there would likely be a bigger payoff with built ins.

Follow Emily's board fireplace on Pinterest.

One option is to do faux built in corner shelves on the outside edges of the windows.

Corner shelf; I could do this in either corner with a seat in between flanking the fireplace.

For painting, you can go from your safe white or very light gray to black or metallic or bright blue. For this room white, light cream, or light gray are probably our only options. IF we decide to paint, I vote that we white wash first, because we can always add more paint if we decide to go opaque. This keeps the texture and character of the brick, but brightens the space.