We have a very open floor plan in our new house, which I love, but it posed a bit of a challenge when deciding how to arrange our living room. We had moved from a house that had a moderate sized living room, that was closed off. We had one sofa and two chairs, along with a TV stand flanked by two bookcases. That was about it as far as furniture. In our new house, we have a fireplace, which sort of causes it to be the gathering point for the rest of the furniture. The back of the living room also serves as a “hallway” to our guest bedroom and bath. All of these things we had to take into consideration when deciding how we wanted to arrange our furniture, and what pieces we would need to purchase. It was a long pain-staking process trying to decide on everything! To give you an idea of the “before”… here is a panoramic shot of our living room shortly after we moved in.

We knew we wanted more seating, and comfortable seating at that! Those white chairs will be the death of my father and father-in-law. They both think they are SO uncomfortable! I don’t think they’re so bad. They’ve found a new home in our sitting room off our bedroom 🙂 We searched high and low for sofas and couldn’t find any we loved. We finally ended up finding some at Pottery Barn that we really liked.  I knew I wanted to keep the same type of fabric (velour/velvet) that we had on our previous couch. The stuff repelled water great and any messy fingers that came in contact with the fabric were easy to clean up! Luckily, Pottery Barn has said fabric… it’s called “Everyday Velvet”. The awesome thing about the whole experience, is that we were able to utilize their free design service. A consultant came out to our house and brought fabric samples (much larger than the small ones you get in store), she also measured and mocked up a floor plan for us, showing exactly what furniture pieces would look like in certain arrangements. It was a huge help and advantage to have that service!

Our biggest obstacle, by far, was color. Our carpet leans towards the tan/brown side, but I wanted a greige couch. We ended up choosing “Carbon” which is perfect. It’s grey, but not too blue. The couches we chose were the Buchanan Roll Arm Upholstered Sofa . If you’re in the market, you’ll want to call around to different stores to see what they have on the floor to try out. None of our local stores had the Buchanan on site, but they had the Cameron; which is very similar. We chose the Buchanan simply because it was a bit deeper than the Cameron and was more to the dimension of our current couch, which we thought was a pretty good size. We purchased the couches in October and they arrived at the beginning of January. It was a bit of a long wait, but it was worth it! We have them now and LOVE them! They are super comfy and roomy. We actually ended up getting two love seats because, again, the dimensions were similar to the couch we had at the time.

After we tackled the seating arrangements, our next obstacle was this “hallway”. I opted for an “entertainment” type shelf that is typically used as a TV stand, but turned it into more of a console table. It helps add something to that large wall, without crowned the walk area to the guest bedroom and bath.

Ottomans were one of the last things we had to tackle. We had originally thought we would go with something square, similar to this. However, Kyle came up with the idea of buying large “pouf” ottomans that could also be used as additional seating if needed. Plus, they could easily be moved to be used at either sofa. Let me tell you, said “pouf” ottomans are EXPENSIVE! Like $130 a piece expensive. That’s crazy!! Luckily, we were able to find these at Target for $60 each. SCORE!

Another obstacle… can you see why it’s taken us almost nine months to complete this room?! The wall that our one loveseat is on is MASSIVE. Not only that, but it has a doorway cut out on one end, making it a bit more difficult to center things. I knew a wall gallery would be the easiest solution to this. My original plan was to do two rows of  three vertical frames. However, after putting that in my wall gallery design app, I saw that wasn’t going to work. So, I ended up with what you see below. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! All of the photos represent the story of my hubby and I- where we met, where we married and where we honeymooned. So special <3

1. Couches
2. End Tables
3. Lamp Base *10% off through 2/14/15!
4. Shades *10% off through 2/14/15!
5. Entertainment shelf *10% off through 2/14/15!
6. Gold Starburst Mirror
7. Rug *10% off through 2/14/15!
8. Pouf Ottomans
9. Frames- Purchased through my supplier
10. White Pillows
11. Yellow Pillows- Homegoods
12. Curtains- Pottery Barn, purchased a few years ago
13. Wall Color