Living Room: The Project

Tony and I promised each other that when we moved into our house we would not go crazy buying up stuff for the house just to fill it up. We wanted to take our time, find pieces we love, and make our house feel traditional, comfy, and unique. I wanted to make sure we didn't just go to a box store, pick out an entire room set down to the lamps and pictures and bring it home. Something about the idea that 100s of other families across the world may have the EXACT same living room I just find odd. Anyway, we also wanted to make sure we didn't blow the budget and make ourselves prisoners of our new home.

So here we are eight months later still working on our living room. To be fair to ourselves, we've come a LONG way.

When we moved in all we had were our two couches from my previous apartment that were bought at a big box store. We picked out a chocolate/gray paint color for the room and spent our Christmas break painting. We also spent a few weekends driving down to the Pottery Barn outlet in San Marcos and found AMAZING deals for items that were on sale full price on their website. We got the TV stand, coffee table and side tables from there. We still had paper blinds because we had plantation shutters on order. At that point, we were here:

The coffee table wasn't in this picture. The big problem with this setup was the lack of a rug. With our little runner of a dog he quickly began to destroy our beautiful wood floors. So a month later we finally decided on a rug. We also rearranged the furniture to get a more "conversational" feel to the room.

Now, we're left with finding art work for the walls and window treatments. I know it's going to take a while to find art work because 1) I'm not paying a fortune for a print and 2) we're both picky people. Here's the window we're working on right now.

We want simple, long drapes that will just be for decoration. They'll hang on the sides of the shutters. Last weekend, Tony and I found a beautiful fabric and curtain rod that were at killer prices. My mom has started on the sewing process. Here she is in our formal dining room, a room that is also a work in progress for us. Baby steps...

They're ready to be hung but we haven't had the time to mount the curtain rod. A finished picture of the whole room to come soon!