Our Home: Living Room Plans

It’s been a little while since I’ve checked in about plans for our home, but now that it’s been a couple months since we moved in, it’s time to really get planning. And I AM SO READY!

Despite trying to purge most of our things prior to moving, there was still a lot to Craigslist and sell off in orderto bring our new home down to a pretty clean slate. After using hand-me-downs and thrift store finds to furnish and decorate our home spaces before (which I’ve truly enjoyed in its own way!), I’ve been excited to start selecting some “grown up” pieces for our first place as homeowners——you know, to really play with all those ideas I’ve had for my dream home one day without having to ask for a landlord’s permission or to think about how well it might work if we had to move. And while we don’t have the budget to fulfill my every interior design fantasy, I’m happy to take my time to slowly invest in a few beautiful and high quality pieces for this little apartment of ours. I’d rather buy one thing at a time that we absolutely love and maybe have to spend a little extra longer saving up for than rushing to “finish” a room.

So all of that said, we’ve now been living here in Boston in our new home for about two and a half months, and I’m ready to start taking the next steps in getting our living room set up. I’ll put together a moodboard and some more concrete ideas soon, but here’s a breakdown of the overall cosmetic plans I have for the room!

As you may know from my Instagram stories, one of the first purchases we made when we moved here was a new mattress (and ps: we went with the Casper Essential mattress and it is uh-maze-ing). We prioritized a few other big ticket purchases mostly focusing on the kitchen, and once we ticked those off our to-do list we were quickly tapped out on larger purchases. So our old mattress has been serving as a sofa/daybed for us as a placeholder in the living room. Super chic, I know – haha. But it’s been doing the trick, and our pup General Gazpacho has zero complaints about having a super plush mattress at ground level to lounge on all day!

I did do a few quick things to the space right when we moved in, which I think went a long way in keeping me satisfied with stalled progress on this room:

  • Hung curtain hardware and curtains (similar), because I think those add A LOT to a room feeling a little more lived in and finished, especially when its a space like ours drenched in natural light (my favorite!)
  • Pulled the trigger on bookshelves to house my addiction to books and trinkets
  • Got a neutral rug to ground the space and visually break up all the intense orange tones happening in our old wooden floors

 

PLANS FOR THE LIVING ROOM

  • Picking a new paint color for the walls. I’m currently swinging between a soft balanced white or a warmer light gray—which I know everyone might be “over” by now, but I like a pretty classic, earth toned, airy aesthetic whether or not its in vogue, so I want to stick to the palette that makes the space feel the most relaxing and reflective of my personal style
  • Paint the radiator covers white to match the trim
  • Add ambiant lighting
  • Purchase a sofa or small scale sectional
  • Purchase a coffee table
  • Upgrade cheap blinds to a better shade solution

 

Here is our living room from an alternate angle. To the left of this little fireplace is our kitchen, which has an open floor plan into the living room, so I need to be careful with scale and keeping a good flow between the spaces. I’ve never been a big “open floorplan” kind of gal, I like partitioned off rooms and segmented spaces, so this is a bit of a challenge for me, which is why I keep flip flopping between wanting a chaise style sectional versus a straightforward sofa in regards to how they would both “define” a space differently (as in, an L shaped sofa naturally creates a border around a space semi-mimicking a partition).

I also love that our apartment has a little fireplace, and while it’s petite and not super grand, I still want to style out that mantle and make it an art-driven focal point rather than a place to hang our TV. And no offense at all to anyone who does hang their TV over the fireplace, it can make total sense for some and can sometimes feel like the only option configuration-wise in a room! But it’s not a priority to us to have the TV there, so we are going to house it over on the far wall by our front door instead.

  • Find large scale, modern art to hang over mantle—I have so many vintage and antique odds, so I’d like to balance all those decor items with a more contemporary style art piece for over the mantle—a piece with a lot of negative space to bring some calm to all those little tchotchkes I’m guilty of stockpiling.
  • Tuck Gazpacho’s toy basket away somewhere he can still easily get to them but are tucked away (nobody puts G’s toys in a corner!!)
  • Paint walls – the color for the living room space will continue into that hallway for uniformity and to keep a good flow between spaces

 

 

Here are those bookshelves we got, and ahhhhhhhh they make me happy. I’m a book nerd and this is only a fraction of what I’ve kept (I’m constantly trying to purge BUT GUYS IT’S HARD), and it makes me so happy to have a home for them now. I actually like how those bookshelves are styled in person, but they are photographing as really busy and chaotic, so I’ll prob futz around with those some more another time because the OCD stylist in me don’t like that. Gazpacho don’t give any damns though, as you can see.

  • Upgrade to a slightly larger and slimmer TV, and mount on wall to try to camoflauge it a bit more as a part of that “gallery wall”
  • Try to rescue that dangly air plant/Spanish moss on the right coming out of the white vase that is dying a slow, painful, and ugly death

 

This corner is a bit of a hot mess right now, and I wants to make it pretty guys. I loved that vintage peg rack that I used in my old storefront, so I held onto it and added it over on this wall as a place to hang my market bag and such (its right next to the kitchen so it makes sense to have that grocery/famers market bag at an easy reach there), and maybe a throw blanket as well in the colder months.

  • Add ambiant light and get rid of that old Ikea lamp
  • Find a better spot for the fan
  • add a cozy chair to float in front of that corner of the room or maybe a small cabinet?

There will still be a lot of finishing touches and decor items I’d like to finish out the room, but getting started on the foundational things like wall color and sofa selection is my next priority—and I’m so pumped! I can finally have people over without making them sit on the floor, haha….it’s the little things, you know?

Until next time! (Expect a round up of sofas I’m considering soon…)

xoxo,
Mary

Join the conversation and share your thoughts!

  1. Michelle says:

    I love all these ideas! I’m constantly working g to make my spaces more minimal. I love seeing the way other people make their spaces their own! All that white with a dog! Gazpacho must be one diligent pup about wiping his paws!

    • Mary Spears says:

      Thanks Michelle! I’m excited to start making some more progress in here – especially to get a sofa in the space to start building around! I do like to steer on the lighter side of the spectrum as far as textiles and color schemes to relect as much light and make our small space feel bigger, and honestly I just got really lucky that General Gazpacho is super OCD about his own hygiene, haha. I swear he keeps himself cleaner than I keep myself! So as long as I don’t do any stark whites (I think we’ll do some light taupes and grays), I’m not too worried about things getting too dirty…knock on wood??

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