This room is a good example of my rearranging addiction. It looked like this a few weeks ago when I took these photos but now the armchair is different, the coffee table is kaput and there's a big old table in there. So I already need to do a living room update. But for now, let's carry on and pretend it still looks like this.
The living room is at the back of the house at the end of the hallway and leads onto the verandah. Originally, we had the TV and all the couches in this room and a big table and chairs in the formal dining room (through the brown glass doors to the left of the picture above). This was the most obvious set up, but as we got to know the house we decided it wasn't the best one.
For a start, we were using the dining room very infrequently. It's quite a walk from the kitchen and apart from the odd occasion we were eating all our meals in the kitchen, or on our laps on the couch. In the flat dwelling days of my twenties I used to dream of separate dining rooms, but as it turns out, having an entire room in the centre of the house that was 90% thoroughfare really annoyed me.
The other thing I didn't love was having all my comfy, conversation chairs faced around the TV. I worked from home even before I had Baby and it meant I spent all my couch laptop time loomed over by a big blank screen.
So, about six months ago I convinced J to shift the dining table into the kitchen and made the old dining room into a TV room with an old leather lounge we were handed down.
This left the living room for library and conversation only. I still don't feel like I've got the flow this room quite right (hence the ongoing changes) but we are definitely using the pair of rooms at the centre of our house as a more combined living space.
J and I are both hoarders of books we find here and there. One day I'd like to build a floor to ceiling bookcase along this entire wall. With a ladder.
I used to spend ages making little tablescapes on this coffee table with teapots and funny breakable things, but now that Baby has started pulling himself up on the furniture and looking for treasure it's all over. My latest concession is this child-friendly collection of things I don't mind if he knocks down and eats.
We knocked down the kitchen in our house and moved that to the dining room..making dining room defunct and old kitchen=outdoor living space. I'm with you on the silliness of wasted space. A library (with a ladder!) is a dream of mine! Definitely won't be happening in this house, but SOMEDAY !
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