Living room changes

The living room has been the most challenging for me to work with. It all started when we first moved in. As I've mentioned before, we found it difficult to configure our existing furniture and create a combined living and dining area. We removed a large built-in and knocked out an adjacent wall to make the room feel larger and somehow managed to get all our furniture to fit without it feeling crammed.

Before photo of the wall where the TV sits.

Since then I've been stuck though. If you are like me, you read design magazines and blogs and look for inspiration wherever you can. You try to find your style, try out new things and hope it works and that you haven't wasted your time or money. When I post changes I make to my home here I'm never sure if I have gotten it right. I try though and I hope what I do encourages others to try too. That would be really great.

We purchased two IKEA mirrors. This is the first being hung.

But back to the living room. Over time I have collected a pile of living room images from magazines and the internet but I haven't been able to find that perfect image or combination of images to draw inspiration from. The trouble I have had and that I've mentioned before is with the big elephant in the room - the television. It's not easy finding nice images of living rooms with televisions in them. Usually the TV is cut from the picture or hidden or perhaps the people who own these rooms really don't have a TV?

Both mirrors hung. From various angles they reflect the view at the front of the house and they've made the living area feel more open.

Over the weekend we hung two large mirrors vertically to give the wall some interest, to reflect the nice view we have from the front of the house and to add symmetry because I'm a bit of a nut for symmetry. If we get sick of catching our reflections in the mirrors I can always hang some decorative paper over the mirrored part and I might even do that if I ever feel like a change.

The view from the entrance.

The next step is to mount the TV on the wall and add a few of our favourite things on top of the TV unit. I don't think I should wallpaper the TV wall because I like that the mirrors blend in. Wallpaper might look best on the wall closest to the entrance of the house.

I would love to know, is there a room in your home that you just don't know what to do with? What do you do when you are stuck for ideas?