Hello World

Wow, it's been a bit since I wrote here. I have been busy.

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Photos below may not be "pretty" as they are "in progress". You have been warned!

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Our living room is REALLY hard to decorate. I have lived here for going on ten years and we FINALLY think we have a solution. I will NEVER live with angeled walls EVER AGAIN!

Walls, crown and baseboard trim all completely painted, we mounted our TV on our angled fireplace wall (the bane of our existence - see note above) last weekend. We mounted two floating shelves to the left of that wall to hold our components (top shelf Wii and modem, bottom shelf XBOX, wireless router & Blue Ray player). We will probably get a guitar mount for the Wii Guitar leaning against the lower shelf.

Now we are dealing with wires. Lots of them. (Notice how the power cord for the TV does not reach to the outlet and we have that very attractive surge strip nesteled in our fireplace tools? I think it really adds something). The mantle in the photo below is part of our old one and will be replaced. The tan tile surround will be replaced with grey and white Carrara marble tile.

Hiding the power cords is going to be a challenge. There is no option to go in to the wall. So far my husband has used flexible hosing to "hide" them and plans to paint them to match the wall. I still don't think painting them will completely hide them. We have not built our mantle yet so I hope we can encorporate hiding the cords in to the design. Especially on the right with the surge strip. Even if the surge strip was mounted to the side of the mantle "legs" and the cord hidden by one of those squared off cord covers you can mount to the wall and paint your wall color. This actually looks better then it did when first put up. Don't even get me started on a surround sound system which we have yet to purchase. This living room project is going to take a bit longer than planned I think.

C and I both tought the floating shelving would make the room feel less cluttered but I am sad to say I don't feel that way right now. I thought about a small lingerie chest that could sit there and cover the outlet. We could change the drawers to flip down when we needed to access the components. I dare not suggest to C since he worked so hard getting it this far. I just really need camoflage for that wall under the shelf. It's complicated by the angled (and unfinished) hearth.

Any suggestions would be appreciated as well.

Because we mounted our TV we were able to move our couch to a wall instead of blocking traffic flow through to our dining room. This makes me incredibly happy and almost makes up for the cord situation. Last weekend we scored two IKEA chairs through CL for half off. I bought some great brown and cream zebra printed fabric yesterday to slipcover two pillows for the chairs. You can just glimpse our DVD storage in the background - oops didn't notice the storage box behind the chair. In my defence I did warn photos were not pretty.

The room feels really roomy and I am loving it! With the curtains open and the couch facing the window it feels much brighter in here. There is no glare from the window on the TV anymore either. We have furniture we were sorely lacking for a family of four as well.

We have a few more tasks to complete before the big reveal. We need to take the rest of the old tile off our hearth and replace it with yummy grey and white Carrara marble and redo our mantle. We have decided to purchase a surround sound system first (our old one died about a year and a half ago) so we can design the mantle after we have ALL components. I also need to make a slip cover for the couch and I have an art piece I want to do to go on the wall over it.

Down the road we will be purchasing a rug but not until after our cat is gone. She is responsible for ruining our last one. We will eventually replace the sofa with something nicer and do some in ceiling can lighting.