The beginnings of a house tour

So we’ve been in our home for almost a year now and I finally feel like some of the rooms are ready to be photographed for my blog. Over the summer I hope to get the rest ready but for now we’ll start with the living room. It’s not quite finished but it’s close enough so that you get the general idea.

We built a split-foyer home (more on that decision in a future post) so you walk in through our front door and go up half a flight of stairs to reach the main living level.

In our previous home we had a similar set-up for the main living area but there was a wall separating the dining room, kitchen, and living room. It made all the rooms feel much smaller (technically they were considerably smaller than our current home…but even if they had been the same size, those walls made everything feel very closed in). Going into the build we knew we wanted an open layout and we love the way it turned out. We’ll start with a left turn into the living room. Yes, I am ashamed…I was watching Jaws 3. And yes, it’s just as bad as I remember.

You’ll see a glimpse of our “travel” gallery wall that lines the stairs but we’ll save that for another day.

Our sectional sofa, ottoman, and cushions are from Bassett Furniture (a house-warming gift from my parents). The side table is from Crate and Barrel and the little square coffee table is the infamous Ikea Lack table. The rug is also from Ikea. One of my favorite parts of this room is our little gallery wall in between our bookshelves. There’s a photo from our engagement photo session and one of our first dance and then the rest are dedicated to our four-footed family members. Unfortunately we didn’t quite nail the frame spacing on the walls but we need to add another frame or two for our new family member, Rogue, so it’ll probably work out in the end. The short bookshelf on the right behind the couch is one of two cookbook bookshelves. The bookshelves on the left hold our boardgames and DVD/BluRay collection.

Okay, TV off. This is the view from behind our couch. You can see the ottoman and our nifty media center from Crate and Barrel. I need to work on possibly drilling a few additional holes to accommodate the WiiU as its cords don’t quite stretch to the open shelves. We also decided to wall-mount our TV and the installation was a birthday present to Steve (compliments of Best Buy). I decided that I’d rather pay them to do it with the guarantee that if it falls off the wall they’ll replace it than do it ourselves and have to buy a new TV when it falls off the wall. Yeah, I don’t have much faith in our DIY capabilities…yet…

Oh and you can also see my favorite light fixture in our home on the left, the capiz chandelier from West Elm!

And this is just from the other side of the couch. You can see our taller bookshelves, they’re the Billy bookcases from Ikea. I have grand ideas of making them look more built-in with crown molding and some other hacks to make them look more like one solid unit rather than two bookshelves side by side. The curtains are from West Elm and they’re particular favorites of mine (as you’ll see since they’re in several rooms throughout the house). I love the gathered pintuck look (especially because it means I don’t have to worry about ironing them!). Oh and the table behind the couch is from Crate and Barrel. It’s nice having a place to put a plate or glass that’s out of dog range; unfortunately, it is not out of kitten range.

Again, it’s not quite finished but it’s getting there. Future plans include:

creating ‘built-ins’ with the Billy bookshelves
researching upgrading our current Bose sound system and/or mounting the speakers
continuing to play around with styling the bookshelves and the media console (kitten-proofing included)
adding to the gallery wall
finding a lamp for the table behind the couch (we had an outlet installed in the floor, under the couch, to make that easier)

So that’s our living room! I look forward to sharing the rest of our home with you! 🙂