Re-arranging the living room

It's no secret that I haven't been entirely satisfied with the layout of our living room. The open layout of our main floor - which I love and plan to open up even more when we reno our kitchen - is a bit of a design challenge, especially with two focal points (tv and fireplace). I initially confined the "living room" to the area around the fireplace, creating a dead space behind the couch that I started to turn into a work area.

The Before:

Drawn using floorplanner.com. Keep in mind that it's not to scale and our furniture doesn't really look like this. 

Even though I thought I was maximizing our space, I was really just making the room feel smaller (oops). From day one I had been picturing this space as two distinct "areas" instead of one big room.

The Soon-to-be After:


Again, not to scale, not our furniture.

It's amazing how much larger the entire main floor feels this way (yes, I already started moving things around - I even used painter's tape to map out an area for our future rug). It means I'm losing my little work area, but we're gaining seating, storage and a much improved traffic flow. This picture gives you a better idea of what we're planning in terms of layout (we're planning to keep our shelving open, so ignore the doors).


Image via bhg.com

Now to sell and/or relocate some furniture and buy and/or build some new pieces.

Looking for some furniture arrangement ideas? Check out this slideshow from BHG.