Do you love your living room?  I don’t know about you but we take the name quite literally here in our house and we really LIVE in the living room.  It’s also what you see when you walk in the house so it’s the first impression. And I didn’t love mine.

Here’s the before:

Actually, if I’m being completely honest, when I started the project we had just been robbed.  Okay that’s a lie but this is what two little boys will make a room look like when left to their own accord:

The first picture is what it looks like between the hours of 8 pm and 7 am.

Moving on.

There were two things that were really bugging me. First, was the rug.  In our old home a 5×7 rug was the perfect size for that space but in this house is just looked like it was falling short of it’s responsibilities.  #2 was the corner.  No matter what I put there it just looked like I had stuck something in the corner.  Nothing ever looked intentional.

I’ve learned a couple of things over the years about decorating our home that have proved invaluable:

#1 Find a statement piece, something you love, and work around it

For this particular project it was the pillows on the couch.  I found them at Ross a couple of months ago, I loved the colors and they were super inexpensive so I went for it.

I knew they wouldn’t work with the current rug but I had somewhat of a vision and was willing to wait for it…which brings me to my next piece of advice

#2 Have patience

Of course when I brought home the pillows I immediately started shopping online for the perfect rug but I just couldn’t find it.  About a month later I came across one that jumped out at me and I bookmarked it…didn’t have the cash at that point.  Finally a couple of weeks ago I went to look at it again and it was on sale with free shipping – SCORE!

7 days later she had transformed our living room

As you can see, I did a little more rearranging – but that’s it, no more money was spent

After laying the rug I:

• Painted the metal picture frames a new color (couldn’t tell you what it is because I mixed it from 3 different paints in my garage but ‘purple’ is safe) and moved them over the couch
• Switched the tall skinny mosaic tile table with the cabinet
• Moved the metal scroll artwork from another part of the room (not pictured) to above the cabinet
• Magazine rack moved from one side of the room to the other
• Hung the small square frames in the corner – not planned, last minute move and I LOVE IT

I did a lot of other rearranging that didn’t actually stick such as switching the couch and the chairs (no bueno).  I just kept changing things up until it felt right. So that’s my third piece of advice:

#3 Be Brave

It doesn’t cost anything to rearrange, to take things from one part of the house and move them to another, to hang things up and then decide to take them down.  Experiment!!  Have fun with it, it’s like getting a whole new room!

***Confession:  I may or may not have already vacuumed this rug 3 times in two days.