Our living room’s far from complete. The ceiling has holes where the previous light fittings were (fixable), it needs another coat of paint in places (doable), and we’d love to put some wood flooring down across the whole of the bottom floor (definitely not happening right now). But we’ve bought, inherited and made a few bits to make it feel like ours…
Barry made this bookcase from reclaimed boards (you may have noticed it on my end of 2016 post). It’s now holding books, games, puzzles, and logs, and we’ve reserved the space at the top for a lamp and firelighters/matches, waaaaaaaaay out of reach of tiny hands.
I wrote a whole post on the lights we were considering for this room. For the living area, we had a swirly whirly (I’m going with it), which we’ve replaced with this blue Lena Bjerre pendant lightshade from Houseology. You can’t see it up, because we still need to fix the ceiling from the swirly whirly so it looks half done. In the dining area, we decided to go for the Paris lights (see photo below), which were on my list of options, but I was worried they’d look a little industrial. They seem to fit with the style of the room now they’re in, though.
A piano was something we really wanted, even though neither of us play. If I could choose one instrument for the kids to play, it would be this. Having studied A Level music, it would have been a lot easier if I had been a pianist, rather than just understanding where the notes were and being able to read music (but my clarinet is under the bed, just in case either of them need it!).
This one was being given away by a friend of a friend. We weren’t actually looking for one yet, but the fear of it being chopped up and skipped pushed us to fetch this one, although we’re not sure this is where we want it to stay, so we haven’t had it tuned yet (we may yet want to move it to the kitchen).
One must-have item with a soon-to-be toddler was a fire guard. It took us ages to choose one – Barry wanted to be very practical and buy the massive ones that cover everything, pretty much the exact one my parents had. I was looking for one with a less industrial/1982 council house feel and found this art deco style one on eBay, which is light enough to lift between the log burners.
I noticed when I was outside the house, looking in, that we definitely need something above the sofa – the wall looks really naked without it, but we don’t have any budget for actual art. Having watched a key episode of The Great Interior Design Challenge, I’ve obviously decided I can totally make some art*.
*Yet to be confirmed