Elizabeth September 29th, 2011
Welcome to our living room! Tim and I spend a lot of our time in here, and we’re lucky to have such a big room to relax in. This is where we watch movies, read, eat our dinner (more often than I like to admit) and snuggle up on a cold winters night.
We love it, but the placement of the french doors, bay window and mantlepiece meant that we had to find some pretty creative solutions in this room. It turns out that plate rails are brilliant if you want to hide long lengths of extension cords and cables!
I mentioned in my last house tour post that it can be difficult to settle in to a place as a renter, especially when you’re bound by strict rules. One of the reasons we wanted to live here is that the landlord would allow us to have our dog, whereas we were constantly hiding him from the real estate agent in our last house. Many hours were spent driving around in the car (with the dog and all his things) waiting for inspections to come and go.
On the other hand, in this house we’re not allowed to put a single hole in the walls. This means we’re stuck with 3M adhesive hooks, and while they do a pretty great job I’m really nervous about hanging anything heavy in case the paint is damaged. I’ve tried to compensate for this by finding a few tall free-standing pieces that will balance out our high ceilings without the need for lots of framed art work.
The saddest part is that all of my own framed photography is sitting in boxes. I can’t wait to own my own place!
On with the show…
This is our living room from the foyer, just inside the front door. (Mind that you don’t trip over the emo dog, he’s probably just reciting poetry or listening to The Cure.)
From this angle you can see that we probably don’t need to buy any more cushions for a while. We have them for two reasons – colour, and to hide as much of our crappy couches as possible.
Success!
I inherited this painting from my grandparents this year, and it hangs above our two-seater couch. I’m looking forward to having it re-framed someday and breathing some new life into it. Until then we need to lengthen the wire so that it isn’t sitting so high up on the wall. One for the “to do” list, I guess!
This one was painted this one in our old house in Hawthorn. One day we had come home from work to find that our landlord had chopped down our beautiful big gum tree in the backyard, and all that was left was a stump and a stack of sawdust. I loved that tree, so I decided to find a way to preserve it some way in a painting. There’s a bunch of sawdust in the textured background of this canvas.
I realise that I am tragically sentimental sometimes, but it is nice to have this little momento from our very first house together.
Lighting is one of the things that make this room a little bit special. We almost never use the built-in light fitting in the ceiling, as we’ve got a bunch of lamps, lanterns and fairy lights scattered across the place. When we want to watch a movie we turn off the main lamps and leave the lanterns and twig lights on. It gives off a pretty ambient glow without being distracting or reflecting off the TV.
Honestly, lighting can make or break the way that I feel about a room. It makes all the difference!
This is Tim’s desk, and the Prismacolors that I wish he would use more. Tim is pretty good at drawing stuff and we should all hassle him to break out the markers every so often!
This part of the room is where I spent most nights in Winter – stretched out on the beanbag, right in front of the heater! In a couple of months we’ll put the Christmas tree right where the beanbag is now. I’m secretly a tiny bit (very) excited that December is only two months away…
So that’s it – our colourful living room, brightened up as much as our lease contract will allow.
Next: the dining room!
Some of the details: The couches (once great, now old and broken) from Freedom Furniture / Wooden elephant and Coffee table from Ishka, carried home on a tram before we had a car (everyone should do this once) / TV unit from IKEA (Markor), and sadly no longer available / Desk and DVD shelves from Victoriana Wardrobe Company / Cushions from Urban Home Republic, Target & The Works / Beanbag from Chillizone (highly recommended – inexpensive and good quality) / Floor lamp is the IKEA Regolit, and we took a couple of segments out of the bendy bit so it sat a little higher / Lanterns from Typo, Twig lights from Freedom Furniture / Painting is signed by Jacques Morgan and I hope somebody googles this and can tell me who he is! / Dr Delbert Bronwyn by Ryan Berkley, and I think I might need to start a collection of these / Clock from Maison Living / E & T letters and decorative balls from Supply & Demand
If you missed it, here’s Part 1: Entry & Foyer
