Living Room Progress + Dreaming

Well hey there strangers! Sorry about all the blogging I have not been doing lately, this summer hit me harder than I was expecting. Adam worked a ton of extra hours and the four boys were all-consuming, so I decided to put blogging aside and enjoy my kids until summer was over. The older two are back in school now (kinder and 2nd) and here I am! Having just a two-year-old and nearly one year old at home during the day is like a freaking vacation…they’re so quiet. I love my older boys to pieces, but the sheer amount of energy and noise radiating from those two is ridiculous.

So admittedly I haven’t been doing a lot of projects this summer, but I’ll tell you what I have been doing….window shopping. So much online window shopping. You know what got me in this shopping mode? Shiplap.

farmhouse entry

That’s right, the main wall in our house, the one that has been a patchy unfinished eyesore is slowly getting finished. It’s so dang pretty and has me in complete dreamer mode. Here are a few more pics… I’ll write a post about the process when it’s finished, but for now just feast your eyes on the glorious progress.

shiplap in living room

remodeling takes forever

installing shiplap

living room design plans

Besides the shiplap there are a few other things that are different. We finally ditched the old gross microfiber couch and chair (that we’ve had for about 12 years) and bought a used leather one for like $150 bucks. Then like a week later we traded my brother and sister-in-law the leather one for this massive brown sectional that was too big for their townhouse. Here are all three during the transition…SO many brown couches, but so good for playing “the floor is lava.”

brown couches

I have a love-hate relationship with our new couch, Big Brown. First, I love that’s it’s huge and fits everyone no problem, and I now know that we really like having a sectional. Also, it’s super comfortable and has recliners. Comfort comes at a price though, because Big Brown also happens to be horribly unattractive.

ugly brown couch

I also traded out our stylish random carpet scrap for a real rug, which I bought from Natural Area Rugs during a Labor Day sale. It’s slightly too small for the space, but it was less than $100 (including a rug pad) and easy to clean, so its shortcomings can be forgiven. Although, it has yet to recover from shipping and lay flat, and Adam says it’s too busy and he “preferred the scrap.” There’s no winning with that one, his hatred of patterns is buried so deep in his soul that nothing can reach it and set it free.

ugly brown sectional

So while our “for now” living room stuff is certainly functional and practical, I’ve been mentally betraying it and I’ve been shopping for better, dreamier, and less practical living room goodies.  So here is what I would reasonably put in this room if we were at the living room decorating stage of our house journey.

If you’d like to learn more about an item just click on the photo! Also, this post contains affiliate links, click here to read my affiliate disclosure.

 

Rugs

I have spent way too much time looking at rugs. Thing is, rugs can make or break a room AND they are expensive. When you need a 9×12 even a fairly cheap one can be a budget buster. Anyway, I think I’ve decided that I want a blue and white one with a small geometric pattern. It’s pretty much failproof, having a bit of character but nothing overwhelming (aka, hopefully the husband won’t hate it). Here are my three favorites so far…

 

Sectional

Big Brown, though comfortable and practically free, is seriously cramping my style. One day I want to trade it out for a sexy leather sectional like one of these…

 

Accent Chairs

There are SO many cool accent chairs out there and I’m not sure which direction I want to go for mine. Fun and cheap? Neutral and well made? I don’t know which is better when you have four kids.

 

Coffee Table

Adam really wants to make a coffee table, but here are three that I like and will probably draw some inspiration from –

 

 

End tables, decor, pillows, etc

 

There are so many pretty options out there, right? I’m really looking forward to having this room finished one day, but until then I’m going to enjoy the process. Speaking of the process, in the next post I’ll tell you all about those awesome green sliding doors over the office. The second the shiplap was up I was all “Now we can hang the doors! C’mon Adam it will take like 30 minutes”…..and a week later we were still working on it. So in other words, it was a totally average DIY project.

 

 

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25 Comments

  1. You should totally have leaf coffee table but in the shape of Texas! Even if it’s just a small piece at the side of the sectional, you could have a stained heart (like your Union Jack!) for the part where you live!

    I love the first rug!

    Oh and did you paint your yellow command centre console Grey or is that new?!

    1. You have a good eye! That is the yellow table, I painted it what was supposed to be blue but it looks kinda blah. I think I’m going to paint it something brighter and give it the dirty cowboy.

      I like the Texas table idea, that would be a fun project!

  2. I’m glad to see you back up and posting! How far were you from the flooding? I was thinking about you and hoping you were all safe, and your beautiful new house was not getting damaged.
    The sliding doors are gorgeous! The shiplap is making a huge difference to the room. I can’t believe how big the baby is getting already! The dreaming stage is fun, isn’t it? (Unless you get stuck in it for years on end, like we have…actual progress would be most welcome…)

    1. I know, all the hurricanes are crazy right? We were predicted to get a ton of flooding when Harvey hit and we prepped accordingly (the only way in and out of our neighborhood is a low water crossing) but the storm went east and got Houston instead. My sister in law lives in Corpus and faired alright, but our quaint little vacation towns of Port Aransas and Rockport are all but gone. I’d love to go get my hands dirty with relief efforts but that’s just not feasible with the babies right now.

      The shiplap is great isn’t it? As soon as it started going up it felt like home, this is what I pictured it looking like when we were designing it. There is still so far to go (and we move at a snails pace) but we are getting there.

      Abram is almost a year now, I can’t even believe it. I’m having a hard time with him getting bigger, he is the last and I want him to stay little forever. He is just the sweetest (and easiest) baby….luckily he is also tiny (14 lbs) and bald as can be, so he seems more babyish than he actually is. He is probably only a couple weeks away from walking though, so toddlerhood is imminent.

      Enough about me though….how was your summer?

      1. My summer was all about survival, it seems! I worked a ton for very little pay, but the highlight was that I looked after my grandson four days a week. He’s 3 1/2, and an incredible sweetheart. I’m missing him already now that he’s back in preschool/daycare.
        The good thing is that I am also back in school. I’ve returned to university to finish up a psychology degree that I started…oh, just a few decades ago! At that time I then did a side step into music, where I have lived and worked for 25 years. But it was never what I really wanted to do as a career, so I’m happy I’m finally back on track! It’s really exhilarating.
        I’m glad you guys were not too affected by the flooding. The footage is unbelievable!! (The other day I saw this meme:
        “Fire – check.
        Flood – check.
        Hurricanes – check.
        Monsoons – check.
        Earthquakes – check.
        Volcanoes…I feel like somebody should check on the volcanoes…”

    1. Hold on…are you trying to tell me that you don’t like my massive, turd-colored, lumpy corduroy couch? And here I thought you had a good eye for design….

      Hope your move went smoothly and you are getting settled in Virginia! I can’t believe how often the Army moves you. Adam and I tried our hardest to get the military to move us around (that was one of the main reasons for joining) but instead they kept us at Drum for six years.

  3. I am seriously in love with those green doors. It’s like you read my mind. I am in the process of buying a house, fingers crossed. My plan is to convert the garbage into a den and do a separate carport. There is a small nook in the garage that I want to make my office My thought was to do barn doors but with clear glass for extra light since it has no windows. The pop of green is genius. I can’t wait to see your how-to post.

  4. Your house is so beautiful! I love it! We have light curtains as well and they definitely brighten up the room. We have a fairly small adjoining dining room/living room so any sort of clutter (mail, toys, sunglasses, etc etc) on the bookshelves or side tables makes the room look messy. So we’ve bought several baskets to store our things in, and it has definitely improved the look of the room.

  5. I love your shiplap and that you are enjoying the process! Your boys are growing up way too fast. While you are Internet dreaming, check out a custom sofa manufacturer that I heard about on another blog, Monarch Sofa. They manufacture right in Texas. Just imagine four young men and their dad and uncles sprawled out on a honkin’ big cognac leather sectional watching a Thanksgiving football game. What a beautiful vision!

    1. Thank you so much for the recommendation! I have never heard of this company, but I just checked them out online and requested a quote for a custom sectional. Curious to see what the price comes back at because they seem pretty reasonable. I would love to not have to wait years and years for a new couch!

      1. Got a quote back (so fast!) for $4318. While I think that’s a good price for what I asked for (leather sectional) its just SO much money. Going to keep shopping (aka stalking sales and craigslist).

  6. You have such a large space I think the current couch is PERFECT! I’m also with your husband on patterns. Too many and it makes the
    house look cluttered in my opinion. Your home is gorgeous!!

  7. I’ve missed your posts! I like all your ideas but I have one thing for you to consider about your coffee table. I have had glass on coffee tables and I have come to hate them. First when my kids were little and now that I have grandchildren. Somehow I forgot what a pain glass was with littles around. They always look dirty from smudges and they really show the dust. I was surprised that the dust showed more on glass than on my wood top. I love the way glass coffee tables look, but too must maintenance for me. Just something to think about. Maybe I’m too anal or maybe lazy!????

    1. That is a great point about the glass! You are definitely right because my glass doors always look disgusting…I could clean them every day (not that I do) and they would still be smudgy and dirty. I think we will stick with a wood top, it would be easier to make that way anyway.

  8. Personally, I’d go for well made and comfortable in accent chairs. That wicker one, or whatever it’s made of, is cute but doesn’t look very comfortable. the blue one is nice with any of the rugs. That’s a massive amount of shiplap, but it really completes the room.

    1. That rope one is so pretty though! They also make an armchair version that looks very comfortable (here), but it’s way over my budget. That blue one comes in a bunch of different colors and was on sale for like $150, so that will probably be the one I go with.

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