A Livable Space

I hinted yesterday that I’m in the process of “moving in” to the house. There is one decent sized project to finish up before the final move– finishing the hardwood in the bedroom– but in the meantime I’ve been focusing on making other areas of the house feel more like rooms you could live in, and less like the entire contents of a Home Depot exploded in the middle of each room.

The current living room was actually both the living room and dining room in the house before I lost my mind and tore all the walls down.

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Here’s a shot from a similar angle now…

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Getting there was an adventure. After the roof rafters and sheathing had been replaced, the walls separating the dining room and living room came down. The left wall was also moved out four feet and the ceilings were vaulted.

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I did have a building crew helping with this part. MysteryMan and I took on some of the new framing and a lot of the “being terrified the roof was going to collapse” part of the work.

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Up until last weekend the living room was grand central for all kinds of projects. Trim staining, cabinet building, tile cutting, and the general storing of stuff.

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Clearing it out and cleaning it up was a several day project. But it got there. Here’s a little tour of our temporary lounging area:

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The cat thinks it’s pretty awesome.

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The leather chair in the image will actually be taking up residence next to the fireplace in the master bedroom once the floors are done, but it’s another great new lounging spot in the living room for now.

95 Responses

  1. I would love a new8x10 rug for my son’s bedroom in a nice neutral color.

  2. I need a rug for my living room. I put in wool carpet a few years ago that has not aged well at all. I want to yank it all out, refinish my floors and put in an area rug.

    An by the way, I never win anything. Just this once?

  3. Our living room is currently covered with laminate flooring. We have 4 kids (soon to be 5)who love to lounge in there, watching their favorite movies. A comfortable rug made from the Tigressá SoftStyle carpet would be perfect for stretching out on the floor!

  4. Dining room – wood look linoleum needs some soft/Living Room – wall to wall not wearing well and needs a cover!

  5. I would love a rug for our living room! We replaced our wall-to-wall carpet with hardwoods, which look beautiful, but now we really need a nice, soft rug.
    Thanks for the chance!

  6. I’d like a nice rug to keep under my feet as I continue to labor on our own fixer-upper…with 3 little boys under 5, I need some soft and luxurious to pamper me in my boy filled house!!

  7. My living room/tv room butts up against my dining room, which has an awesome sisal rug in it. A neutral like this in the tv area would tie the rooms together nicely…. the oriental I have in there now is just not cutting it and needs to go into my bedroom. I’m always playing ‘lets switch all the rugs around’.

  8. My living room is in desperate need of a floor facelift. Our old rug has only been down for 3 years but it looks so bad!

  9. Amazing project and beautiful pictures to document the progress! I live in a 12′ wide rowhouse in Baltimore, so the rug would actually be too big for my house (and my cats would try to destroy it). But I wanted to comment anyway – great job!

  10. My living room! We rent a really small 1950s home with hardwoods where there is no sensible space for a dining table. So we use the living room all the time. When we moved into this house we couldn’t really afford a rug and so I got an outdoor one from ROSS for $30. It’s rough and we could really use something softer.

    Such a great giveaway! Thanks!

  11. I could really use a new rug in my living room! My 15 month old has made it his mission to destroy the one we have so, this comes at a great time for us.

  12. I could really use this rug in my son’s room, he has the coldest room in the house–the basement!

  13. Our house was built in the 1830’s-40’s, and it’s a constant work in progress. The living room floor is less than optimum, and we’ve painted it. We had a rug, until the puppy did what puppies do. So a new rug would be glorious!

  14. I am lucky (or unlucky?) to live in a house that was built before America was American. It means that all my floors slope any way they please, and often spit out the little nails that are supposed to hold the ancient boards together. The living room is especially bad – I don’t go in there without three pairs of socks on. I would love a big new rug for that room.

  15. Our bedroom is desperately in need of a nice soft squishy rug to step on to when we roll out of bed. This house isn’t old, but it is on a slab, so in the winter when you step out of bed your feet immediately start to ache and you get frostbite if you don’t keep moving. Since I live in AZ, I don’t want to get rid of the tile floors – they are awesome most everywhere. But those first few moments could sure use some help….

  16. My living/dining room has wood floors and we are in desperate need of a rug to ground the spaces and add some warmth. Love your site!

  17. This would be the perfect color for our new upcoming master bedroom after the remodel is finished. We’re putting in HW floors because rugs are easier to clean with my allergies (and HW looks awesome) but we need something warm under our feet when we get our bed in the winter.

    That couch turned out great! I would have never thought it was a hand me down.

  18. I would love to make this carpet the start of our family room, which like your house is currently concrete!

  19. Groan, our soon-to-be master bedroom needs something soft and squishy to sink our toes into!!!

  20. We have lots of bare floors that are in need of a wonderful area rug. This would go perfect in our family room 🙂

    Heather

    PS The couch looks amazing!!

  21. I would LOVE a new rug in our living room! We gave our old one that was only months old to my parents in exchange for a couple of Lazy Boy recliners.

  22. The couch looks great! We’re moving soon, probably to a place with lots of tile and wood floors, so I’ll need all kinds of rugs!

  23. Oooh, my studio room needs a fluffly new rug! I can spend my days rolling around on the floor instead of working! 🙂

  24. I would love a rug to cover our yucky living room floor! We just moved into a foreclosure fixer-upper and are saving for real hardwood…a huge rug would be absolutely amazing for us and our current yucky floor!!!!

  25. My living room/workshop needs a rug! One day soon there will be no more cabinets to build and I will finally be able to sit down! I will be tired though, so it would be fine to just lay on that soft looking rug.

  26. The master bedroom NEEDS a soft rug – we’ll it needs a lot of stuff but a soft rug would be a great start.

  27. Love the recovered sofa! You are right, never need a new one with one that looks that fabulous. You are lucky you have family to do that work. SO hard and SO expensive otherwise.

    Now, for the rug. I could use it in my own home but to be honest we just purchased a starter home for our daughter in Pittsburgh and good Lord does it need a rug like that in her living room. Let’s just say we are dealing with an old Craftsman that um, has seen better days…. Right now there is some lovely ugly beige 1950’s carpet. I’m sure underneath is gorgeous hardwood. How nice a new rug on refinished hardwood would be. Oh, I can dream right?

  28. our living room. two giant dogs have a tendency to MOVE the furniture (and no, they’re not allowed on it) around the room and our wood floors are starting to show some abuse. Hoping a rug might help keep things in place a bit better!!! Plus, it just needs that little bit extra that a rug does so nicely to ground a room.

  29. We’ve been living on subfloor for the last few years because we too are remodeling. We could use a nice rug on the floor in front of our fireplace instead of the spatter painted subfloor that is there now.

  30. I NEEEED an 8 x 10 rug for our family room… and quickly, because as we speak, my husband is ripping out the terrible wall-to-wall carpet and putting in hardwood. Pretty to look at, not pretty for our 11-month-old to bang his head on.

  31. Delurking to say: the work on your house is amazing. Truly.

    That said, I wouldn’t turn down an 8×10 rug. My bedroom is carpeted, but I KNOW there’s wood (albeit parquet) under the wall-to-wall carpeting, and I’m itching to unearth it. The rug would satisfy the 75% floor covering clause of my condo association.

  32. Love your blog! We’d treasure a rug for our living room; we’ve been in this house 7 years and no rug yet (we’ve been concentrating on other things, like changing over to craftsman-style trim, and fixing the hole in the ceiling where my husband fell through from the attic…).

  33. We would love a new rug for the dining room. The dog has had one too many accidents in that room, and a rug would be a perfect update!

    (And I may or may not roll on it for hours!)

  34. We would love to put an 8×10 beneath our dining room table that we just built (our build is featured on our site!). Our dining room is so echo-y! Your house is coming together so well, beautiful!

  35. Oh, I’d love to sink my toes into a soft rug for my bedroom or it’d look nice under my dining room table! Luv!!

  36. Wow! Thank You! I really needed some encouragement about my remodeling project in my “new” (30 year old)home. Just finished ripping out 4 layers of assorted floor covering & completedsub-floor replacement (including some joists). What a job & a far greater expense than expected.Now can’t add carpeting in Living Rm as planned.

    Got discouraged & depressed thinking I’d have to tough it out on the plywood floor. BUT-a soft, beautiful floor rug would be just the ticket to my comfort and sanity! Please consider keeping me motivated!

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