Living Room Updates

While I was working on some Halloween projects last night in my living room, such as rearranging some furniture and making creepy spider egg sacs, I realized how much my living room has changed over the past seven months of living here. I thought it would be fun to share some photos of how the room currently looks now in October and how it used to look back when we moved in.

For one, the room is now more cohesive. I sold the cocktail table I redid two years ago, threw away the old rug, and gave back the metal desk my mom gave us. I still haven’t found a replacement for my old coffee table that is the right scale for the living room though. Ryli added a zebra print rug that’s super fun and bold, she also added a dining table, but I guess that’s not quite a living room update, even though you can see it from the living room. I’ve brought in a mid-century record cabinet (found on Craigslist) that right now is almost purely decorative because I haven’t restored it yet, but one day soon…it’s on.

Probably the least impressive transformation is the front of the living room. I found an entertainment center to serve my current needs (curbside find!), and was given a really nice old sound system. However, the lack of wall art is a little disheartening.

So this isn’t a huge update, but the new-ish art on the stairs I found at a garage sale and snagged for about $10. It’s a perfect scale for the size of the wall. I’d love to keep adding more abstract art to the wall, some with color. I just need to keep my eyes open.

My favorite update is the area where the mid-century record cabinet sits. It’s a German-made Telefunken Record Stereo Cabinet that doesn’t actually work anymore and is in dire need of at least a decent cleaning not mention new fabric and an interior restructuring. Any tips? I also added a frame gallery, which I blogged about here, and found some cheap hardback books from Goodwill and placed them on top of the cabinet next to my actual working record player.

It’s crazy how quickly things seem to change. I’m actually surprised by how much I haven’t blogged about because it seemed like such a small detail at the time that it didn’t warrant a whole post. I would still love to paint this room a soft cream shade, but that’s a very large project to think about and I still haven’t even completed the touch-ups from my bedroom painting, so until that’s complete I’m not allowed to think about painting other rooms. I still need a few things in this room before all the furniture acquisitions can be crossed off my list, such as a coffee table, some wooden shelving, and wall art or something to fill the huge wall above my TV.

What small changes have you made that really wound up “making the room?” Are you holding back on any projects because you haven’t completed other projects you’ve started? Does anyone have any experience in restoring antique record cabinets, because I need some help!