The Living Room - Home Sweet Home - Violet LeBeaux

Welcome to the first room in Home Sweet Home: The Living Room!

Read each of the rooms below (links updated as I post):

Before and after:

Finished:

Before:

Looking through my hardrive makes me wish I’d taken more photos before so I could show what a big difference there’s been. I didn’t take many out of embarrassment >_< This is a before but it was a lot worse than this for the first 8 months.

Photo spam:

I really suggest clicking the panoramas to get the full view! You can spot a very sleepy puppy in a lot of them 😉

The view from the kitchen. The cherry blossom windows look particularly awesome on the middle window.

This area typifies the theme I wanted to have for the apartment: Spring.

This is my favorite part of the entire house. This is the window I spend pretty much all day every day staring at. I wanted something to inspire me and I absolutely love it. Every time I look at this window it puts a smile on my face. It’s partially because that container is usually full of M&Ms and partially because it’s beautiful 😉

One more because I love it so much. It seems ridiculous but this just feels *right*.

My noticeboard and photo wall. For Christmas James bought me a gift to Printstagram so I will be getting our photos printed to fill this wall up with happy memories!

The new couch with the rug I spent months crocheting. I made all of those pillows other than the green one too. The speakers I recovered are on the sides.

I crocheted the spiral cushion and the others were made of old dresses. I am most proud of the rug though, it took me so long and I was basically making it up as I went along. If I could stand the idea of spending the next year crocheting I would make one big enough to cover the carpet in our room. It took 10 balls which we got half price at just $2 each!

The tv area is now no longer a mess of cables. Everything has a place.

Background information:

So the lounge is the most important part of the apartment, it’s the area I spend the most time in and I like it to be nice and relaxing. When we came from Brisbane, we didn’t bring any furniture at all. Everything that came down with us was in our car. Not much fit in the car! We bought appliances like the tv, fridge etc when we moved in but didn’t have much left for furniture. Luckily we had some very kind friends who gave us a desk and a folding chair as a start. Even luckier, our apartment had a hard rubbish removal day a few months after we arrived and we were able to salvage some really awesome things including our tv table, rug and a big table we used for a while as my desk. We managed to get the antique couches from a family downstairs who were collectors but also out of room. They were my favorites for a very long time but they were in very bad shape. I wanted to restore them completely but they were too far gone for me so I ended up having to give them away in favor of something newer. I hope the lady that has them now can restore them to their former glory!

You guys will remember that I made some removable curtains for the middle window. We struggled with them for around 6 months before I decided that they just didn’t fit with the look. I absolutely adored them but with the door being broken behind them and therefore very hard to open in Summer they had to go. I actually prefer it this way now that the cherry blossoms are up because it gives a complete view when all of the blinds are up. I reused the fabric from one of the curtains in the bedroom which you’ll see later and once the window is properly fixed I will think about putting something similar back up again.

Changes made:

Couches replaced
Rug replaced with handmade crochet rug
Everything rearranged
Side table painted white
New table cloths for all of the side tables
General cleaning
New decorations for the sliding doors
Tv table rearranged
Inspiration area added
Broken speaker system fixed and covered
Tv area reorganised
Curtains made then removed
Stars on windows replaced with cherry blossoms

Still to be done:

Not totally happy with the tv area, need something else, or something less or a better set up.
Debating whether I want to keep the sliding doors the way they are or whether I would prefer a different set up.

Final thoughts:

I love my lounge room now. This is possibly the room I love the most. This room has gone through the most changes since we moved in but it’s the one I’m the most proud of. When I sit and look out the window at my special flower area I feel relaxed and that’s really what this was all about!

Bonus progress photos:

The tv area with the first version of the inspiration area on the left. The table next to it used to be just full of whatever junk I was using at the time and needed to clean away quickly.

The day our new couch was delivered the whole place was super messy and trashed. They delivered the couch broken too so we had a week and a half trying to fix everything >_<