Living Room: The Reveal

When we first viewed the house there was a very small room at the front of the house, originally it had a couch, coffee table and tv. It felt really small, but we figured that we could make it work. Because this is the first room you see when you come home and the last room you see when you leave I wanted the space to be welcoming and cheerful, something that would put a smile on your face as soon as you walked in the front door. Choosing the right colour combination was tricky but I am so happy with how everything turned out.

I think I'm going to paint the front door red - surprise surprise.

We can now fit a 7' couch, 2 chairs, coffee table, 2 bookshelves and a fireplace and the room feels 2x larger.

Walter proudly guards our awesome fireplace and to hide some of our clutter we snagged some bookshelf doors from IKEA and found some 'coral' fabric from Designer Fabrics for a funky new look.
 

Jeff's favourite couch has secured its place in our home - for now. And Jeff's 26th birthday present is the perfect 'family portrait.'
 
I love how the light streams through these front windows, it's the perfect place to curl up with a book.

Most of the objects on our bookshelves were carefully chosen because they mean something to us or work with the palette of the room. All the books were wrapped with plain white computer paper for a less cluttered look.

We have plans to make this 'message centre' a little more functional, but for now we're just happy to enjoy our finally completed living room.

Before + After

{click on the images to enlarge them}

Front Room: Progress Report

Our front room took forever to come together. After we finished painting it looked like this...

And then it sorta stayed that way for a little while. Our crazy/opposite/overbooked schedules made completing this room a bit of a challenge. With Hubs and I busy at work my father was busing building us this awesome faux fireplace.

{checking out the progress on a trip home}

So, why did we want a faux fireplace? Why not just get an electric one? Well...we looked at some electric options, but in the end we didn't need it to be practical. I just wanted the look of a fireplace without the cost of an actual one. Jeff designed the aesthetics of the piece and my dad generously offered to build it.

{Kuro has decided that it isn't a fireplace, just a large cat bed}

Next I whipped up some curtains made from this awesome fabric from Tonic Living.

We snagged a couple adorable robot prints from JohnWGolden's Etsy Shop

The finishing touch was Walter {he will stay a surprise for now} who came to the house like this...

{excuse the blurry BB picture, I was so excited when he came I lost my mind a little}

It took us another couple weeks to arrange the furniture how we wanted and make it resemble a living room again. There's still a couple things we're tweaking now but it is miles away from where we started...

Hide & Seek

If you live in Toronto, appreciate leather goods and have never heard of Tandy Leather Factory then you are in for a treat. I first heard about them through Style North, an awesome Toronto based blog I read, and as luck would have it they were having an amazing sale at the time. $99 for gigantic hair-on hide rugs. $99! When I saw the promotion on their website I really didn't believe it and rushed down to check it out. Normally rugs this size sell for around $500. IKEA sells hide rugs for $300 but the quality is hit or miss. Luckily, Tandy had tables full of all different kinds of hides, they had the traditional black/white, sable coloured and we picked out a lovely exotic for our 'in progress' living room...

{So soft and purdy}

They seem to have sales quite often and offer so much more than just rugs. Any sort of leather working tool or kit you could possibly dream up and the girls there were super nice and helpful with all our care-related questions. There are a couple scars on the hide {which is why they were sooo deeply discounted}, but you really can't tell unless you get on your hands and knees and look for them, which I hope none of our guests ever do!

Be Brave. Be Teal.

After staring at this image for a couple weeks I convinced myself that we could pull this look off...

...but I wasn't content with 4 taupe walls, I wanted a bit more *pop* from my living room. So, we threw caution to the wind and bought a gallon of Embellished Blue...which is actually teal, just with a fancier name.

I must be super convincing because Hubs didn't really flinch when I showed him the colour chip and explained what I wanted to do. He's either really trusting or totally colourblind.

Colour Dilemma

I think choosing a colour for our front room was harder than deciding to buy the house in the first place. We had a couple 'obstacles' to work around before we came up with our colour combination. First there was our red IKEA Billy bookshelves...

{subtle they ain't}

They were purchased on a whim a couple years ago without thought to future decorating choices. I read a couple tutorials about how to paint IKEA furniture but it looked like a big hassle without a guaranteed result. The red had to stay.

Secondly we had a 7ft long brown leather couch that is probably the comfiest couch out there but we scored it secondhand off Craigslist about a year ago and our kitty's claws made quick work of poking holes in it. It's definitely seen better days but Hubs absolutely refuses to let it go.

If you're keeping track that means I have to work with cherry red and brown. Awesome right? Awesome not. We started with neutrals; grays, tans and browns. Then moved on to soft colours like pale green and blue - but nothing came even remotely close to the clean and fresh look that I wanted. After multiple trips to the paintstore and many testers later (like 12 different testers) our front room looked like this...

...on all 4 walls. And then it stayed that way for weeks while I scoured the internets for what my subconscious wanted but my brain didn't know how to produce.

Then I found this picture...

...and everything fell into place.

{stay tuned!}