Accessorising the living room

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…

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Fire, fire!

Blue log burnerThe spaces beside the log burner appeared perfect for storing logs.  I’ve never actually seen them stored this way, and it turns out, there’s a reason that people put them in neat little piles in front of their log burners and not next to them.

As it turns out, the log burner gets so hot that even with the door closed, the side of the metal box reaches a temperature that can spark a fire in a log not even inside it.

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Light up

Dining area lightWith the bones of the living room almost how we want it, we’re now looking at the lighting in there.  Mostly because two of the three bulbs over the dining table have blown and we don’t want to buy new ones for ceiling lights we don’t like!

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Building with reclaimed wood

IMG_6162Barry’s become a little addicted to Pinterest.  I suddenly started getting alert after alert of pins he’d saved for the house and garden, mostly project-based images, a lot of which were based around reclaimed wood.

Lo and behold – ten huge 3m planks of wood were delivered one day, and Barry had grand plans for them.

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Mismatched chairs

IMG_5237I knew I wanted mismatched chairs for the rustic table and bench that we bought at the end of June.  I had a mooch on eBay and a guy only 15 minutes from us had a few listings up for chairs and stools of varying materials and descriptions, so I emailed him to see if he would take one price for all of them.

This has scored me seven chairs and three stools which all needed painting to match our living room.  So far, I’ve managed to paint… three.  Life with a baby!

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Don’t it make my brown walls blue

Blue log burnerI told you that I’d settled on a blue paint for the living room… well, Barry’s painted it!  Not the whole living room, just the blue bit.  In all honesty, we should have started with the antique white (which is supposed to be covering the cream), because I’ve got a feeling that may never get done now.

It’s made a huge difference to the feel of the room, and it looks slightly different depending on the time of day and how the light hits it.  I’m really pleased with the whole effect.

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Living room finds

We’ve steadily been updating the furniture in the living and dining room.  The furniture from the old house really doesn’t fit in the style of our current house, so we’ve been selling bits that we won’t use to fund new finds.

New sofaOur old corner sofa is temporarily living in the other half of the kitchen, which we’re kind of turning into a play area for the kids.  Ain’t nothing that sofa hasn’t seen, it can take it.

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I got the blues

These are the estate agent photos for the living room.  As you can see, the colour scheme is very brown, lots of wood, brown and cream paint, brown carpet, brown in the curtains… a very neutral, natural colour scheme.  Not for me though.  I’m definitely more of a grey girl when it comes to neutrals.

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