The Evolution Of A Living Room

If you have been following me for any time you know I say, “we are never done decorating”! And that is so true. Take my living room (great room) for example. Since we moved in it has been through several changes! And I’m working on a few more! Let’s look at the evolution of a living room.

Today my blogging friends and I are starting a series called The Evolution Of A Room. We hope to take the rooms in our homes, since we have all recently downsized, and share the changes they have been through.

Let’s get started!

I lived at StoneGable for almost 25 years and in that time my living room was in a constant flux of change!

Let’s look at the StoneGable living room because the evolution of our Tanglewood house is really entwined with StoneGable.

When we downsized to our second forever home, the Tanglewood House, we had to decide what furniture from StoneGable would work at Tanglewood.

This was a gargantuan task because it was very sentimental and meant leaving and letting go of lots of furniture and things I loved!

It also meant a change in style. I am a believer the style of a home should be considered when decorating.

StoneGable was an upscale Farmhouse but Tanglewood is much more contemporary.

So when we moved I decided that although I love Farmhouse our new home would be better suited to Transitional style. Transitional style is a mega style that incorporates many different looks. You can learn more about it HERE.

I still love Farmhouse style and you can see a sign in our Tanglewood kitchen that was a Farmhouse holdover from our last home.

Switching styles did not happen overnight. It took me quite a while to find the right balance of Transitional and other styles I wish to incorporate! But when I finally got rid of most of the Farmhouse accents the rooms in our Tanglewood home looked better!

MOVING INTO TANGLEWOOD

I had so much fun looking at the picture of all the living room changes both big and small since the day we moved in! Even though it’s only been two and a half years ago I did forget our updates and how I decorated the living room as I tried to find what would work best in this room!

And some of the images, to be honest, are a bit painful to look at! I could really see my struggle in them. As I go through all the seasons and changes I’ll be talking about my struggles with the living room.

Here is a picture of our living room the day we moved into Tanglewood, October 14, 2019.

You can see that every piece of furniture and the rug and accent decor was brought from StoneGable.

I still have almost all of the same furnishings today. They came from many rooms at StoneGable and fit together to make up our living room.

I had an acquaintance I greatly admire tell me to buy all new and start over. Although I really like this person very much, she could not have been more wrong!

I’m the kind of person who lets a room evolve! I need to think about decor. I need to live with most decor until I know if I really love it. And if not it is quick to go! I am a serial furniture returner!

But when I know it’s right then it is right, for me!

We had the whole house painted Simply White by Benjamin Moore before we moved in. The living room is open to the foyer, stairs, loft, dining area, kitchen, and sunroom. So painting it all one color made sense.

Originally, Tanglewood was painted the color of the fireplace when we bought it. Can you imagine how closed in it looked? Painting the house white made our open concept home look fresh and bigger and well, open! It was like the white paint set it free from being constrained!

There were not many big changes made to the living room so instead, I’m sharing the evolution of my style and my smaller purchases for this room from season to season.

Let’s get started with the only other big change in the living room and that took place at the end of fall 2019…

FALL 2019

The fireplace had a makeover in the fall of 2019.

Here’s how it looked before, about one week after we moved in…

And here is another before picture of the fireplace in the living room…

I wanted a fireplace with more heft and a bigger presence in the room. You can see how the fireplace was in the process of being made over HERE.

And here is the after…

The mirror above the mantel came from the family room at StoneGable.

It did not take me long to realize I could see the staircase in the mirror. It did not make a pretty reflection! So I began hunting for something to put over the fireplace instead of the mirror!

In the fall of 2019, I was more concerned about unpacking boxes than decorating!

CHRISTMAS 2019

Christmas decorating started three weeks week’s after we moved in and I felt like I needed a bit of calm in my life.

So I pulled out lots of natural colored Christmas decor and winged it!

I usually plan about six months in advance for Christmas. Instead, I dug around the boxes in the basement and used what I could find!

The only thing I bought was a new eleven-foot Christmas tree!

This was the year Lancaster County Magazine, our beloved local magazine, ask to do an article about me and StoneGable blog for their Christmas edition. And a picture of the living room was on the cover!

I do sorta cringe when I see the Christmas decorations! I was really so unprepared!

SPRING 2020

Spring came to Tanglewood and so did a pair of large fern pictures over the fireplace. And they stayed over the fireplace for about as long as spring flowers stayed.

I really thought they were stunning. And they are. Just not over my fireplace.

However, I love the handsome rabbits and the ferns!

In late spring I replaced the fern pictures with the gather sign that still remains above the fireplace today.

SUMMER 2020

Summer 2020 brought little change to the living room except I added a tobacco basket above the gather sign. Both the sign and the basket were about gathering and that is what I wanted our living room to be used for.

I’m a seasonal decorator. I think it is because I was a first-grade teacher! A year should be celebrated from season to season and holiday to holiday!

You can almost always tell what season it is by looking at the decor on our white buffet.

The white buffet came from the dining room at StoneGable and found a home in the living room here at Tanglewood. I think I like to decorate the white buffet more than any other flat surface in our home.

After six months of living at Tanglewood, I felt so unsure and a bit lost when it came to decorating. I felt as though I lost a little of my decorating mojo!

I was really hard on myself! In actuality, our living room is hard to decorate and even harder to photograph!

Oh, it’s a bear to photograph!

It would not be for almost another year until I made peace with this room.

While I was struggling with the living room the bedrooms were fun to decorate and so were the sunroom and dining room. And the kitchen was being made over! And that was really really fun!

Looking back I think if I had gotten some new things, bigger pieces of furniture for the living room it might have been easier.

FALL 2020

Fall for me is all about pumpkins but in the fall of 2020, I found a love for other beautiful fall organics too!

And I embraced rusty oranges and brown color accents which look wonderful with white. The white walls in our home were proving to be a big decorating plus!

Ten months after we moved in I added white curtains to the living room windows. They came from the StoneGable family room and I was thrilled when I found them in a box in the basement. I had totally forgotten about them.

And like every season, that fall I decorated the mantel!

Decorating the mantel has always been a seasonal activity. I start each new season by hanging a wreath on the door and then decorating the mantel!

A small white linen slipcovered chair made its home next to the round table in the living room. And I brought up my very favorite pedestal table from the basement. This table came from StoneGable’s living room.

I liked the addition of the white chair with the soft brown wooden table and sisal rug.

To this day, I make a mental note of just how often people sit in this chair! More than any other. It’s small and cozy!

Here’s also a rare glimpse of the stairs and loft. I just started looking for a contractor to redo the stairs and Covid hit! And I am still trying to find a good contractor to make the stair over!

There are so many spindles, thousands and thousands! At least that’s what it seems like to me. I’m so looking forward to finally making over the stairs putting a runner down the steps and the loft.

CHRISTMAS 2020

My Christmas gift to our living room was the O, Come Let Us Adore Him sign above the mantel.

This picture of our living room was taken from the loft. It gives you a good look at the layout of this room!

This is the year and the season I discovered my love of green as an accent color!

SPRING 2021

Spring saw a new rug in the living room and new curtains too!

The rug replaced the sisal rug that came from StoneGable and was literally falling apart! And this rug covered more floor space than the sisal rug too.

The big lesson I learned from this season was to keep the decor light since the rug is brown. Too much brown is just that… too much!

SUMMER 2021

Little changes in a room add up! Summer came to Tanglewood and so did a new lamp for the white buffet.

The cage lamp began to look a little out of place as I honed my style in the living room. Too rustic and Farmhouse-y.

I still have the “cage” lamp that was on the buffet because I’m just not ready to let it go just yet. I really love this lamp. Actually, it is one of a pair. So they are living happily next to each other on a shelf in the basement.

And flanking the white buffet a pair of fern prints were also added! I looked for almost a year for prints I thought would look nice on either side of the buffet. I was shopping at a local store and when I saw these I knew they were “the ones”.

One thing I also learned was that violet is not a good color for our Tanglewood house!

FALL 2021

A big change happened in the fall of 2021! It took this long to shake the remnants of farmhouse decor and understand how to decorate an open concept home.

I started decorating with a lot fewer layers and much more simply. And I began to like my living room more!

And I began to enjoy decorating the living room.

Decorating StoneGable was second nature and I enjoyed it immensely. Decorating things like a coffee table or the mantel fun are but decorating a whole room still felt odd to me!

I could not say I enjoyed decorating the living room at Tanglewood until now!

Suddely, I found my groove!

I have written hundreds and hundreds of posts about how to decorate and how to love your home and more. But I want you to know that when writing about things like how to live with decor you don’t love… I have lived what I write about and have struggled my way through decorating my home too! I’m just like you, a home decorator who loves to decorate but does not always like the rooms in my home! I’m a decorator that is learning just like you! Learning every day!

CHRISTMAS 2021

Didn’t I just say that I started decorating my home with fewer layers and more simply?

Ooops! Well, it is Christmas!

I loved decorating for Christmas 2021! Again, I think I was finding my groove and understood our home so much more!

I made a big garland from two old scrawny ones and added lots of gold and silver accents to it! I was actually giddy about how this garland turned out.

Who knew that bits and pieces of greens and other things could be wired together to make Christmas magic?

A new mirror came to live over the Curlacue chest and I decorated it for Christmas.

And I also got a new Christmas tree! This one was 8 feet tall and flocked! Oh, I’m a flocking fan for sure!

SPRING 2022

Sping this year brought simple decorating back to the living room! And a new purchase I am obsessed with!

Zebra pillows!

I have totally changed my philosophy about pillows. I used to think that more expensive pillows were an indulgence. But recently I’ve been investing in good quality pillows with good down inserts.

Oh, what a joy!

I’m not saying I will never buy a pillow from HomeGoods or Walmart again, but I will certainly save up for a nice pillow and not feel guilty about buying it!

WHAT CHANGES ARE AHEAD?

The living room is on its way, but still has a way to go!

Here are a few changes ahead for the living room…

• a new coffee table (I’ve sent back two already)
• maybe a new end table where the round table is
• maybe something new over the mantel but not a painting or mirror
• and new pillows for the sofa

Of all the rooms at Tanglewood, the living room is my biggest challenge. Do you have a room like that?

I feel blessed to be living at Tanglewood and have learned so much about decorating from the process of decorating our living room.

Each season I’ll be adding to this post to share the newest changes to our living room!

Please visit two of my favorite people as they share the evolution of their living rooms too!

Designthusiasm | The Evolution of a Relaxing but Stylish Family Room

On Sutton Place | How Our Neutral Great Room Has Evolved