Question of the Day, Friday, August 21

[Winchester]

Good morning!

Let's talk about our living rooms. What color is your living room? How do you decorate? Does everything match or are you rather eclectic? Do you have a lot of pictures in your living room? What about your floors: carpet, hardwood?

We have a bi-level, so we come in the front door and walk up steps to get to the living room. Our living room is painted in a very light grey, almost a rose-grey. We have carpet and I would love to get rid of it; it's the only carpet in the house and is stained from puke and pee. The couch and chair do match and they're old as the hills; in fact, we were just talking about getting slipcovers for both because they're quite worn now and shredded from claws. And we refuse to buy new furniture until we no longer have cats. We have pictures of The Grands on the piano and on the desk. A print of a kitty (called Love Eyes) by CatmanDrew. We have a large bay window in the living room, but there's a big cat tree there. A mouse-shaped toy box, full of toys for the kids. And a large wicker clothesbasket with a big pillow; during the summer, nobody naps there, but in the winter, Tabby lives in it. It's right by the heating register and it's her favorite warm spot. Rick's grandfather's rocking chair is in the living room, along with his secretary's desk. Our living room definitely needs a good makeover!

What about your living room?

 

[klunick]

We just redid our entire living room last year. Walls are a warm brown color. We have a dark brown couch, love seat, and chair. The couch and love seat are in a L formation with an end table with a lamp on it where the two meet. A coffee table in front of the couch and love seat. We also have an 80 inch TV stand/hutch on the opposite wall with our TV on it. Our style is very rustic/cabin-ish. We have a large painting over the couch and one over the fireplace. We have a smaller one on the wall right as you walk into my bedroom. Carpet is brown/tan mix. Our prior male cat picked it out actually. We laid down the samples and he scratched at that one. In hindsight, buying the one he scratched probably wasn't smart but he never did that once it was installed. We also have a coat rack that my oldest has taken over with all his hoodies, windbreakers, and coats. We have a lamp in the corner between the TV stand and fireplace that is one of those "pole" type with the hard lampshade that looks like a bowl.

 

[Norachan]

Our house is very old for a Japanese house, wooden framed and about ready to be demolished to make way for our new home (Which would have happened this year if it hadn't been for.....well, you know) But we love it any way. It was very cheap and has a huge garden that the cats love.

The living room floor is wooden, very creaky and subsiding in one corner. The walls are wooden too. The couch is old and ugly, but covered with Indian bedspreads to hide the nasty fabric. The cats have clawed a hole in the back, but they can do what ever they please and we don't mind.

The nicest part of the living room is the kotatsu. It's made out of a beautiful piece of wood and in the winter it's heated up, so the cats live under it. We've got huge windows in the living room that look out into the woods. The nice view more than makes up for the old furniture and creaky floor.

 

[Jem]

Our living room is a light taupe-ish color, and all doors and trim are white. The floors are a light maple finish laminate, they are cheap and were not installed well (by the previous owner) and I would love new floors throughout the house.
Our living room has the front door to our home and a large bay window. We also have a small closet as well.
As for furniture, against the wall with the door and window, are a wood storage bench under the window, a cat tree, a floor lamp, and a shelving unit in the corner. The curtains are dark purple and beige. And I also have sun catchers hanging in the window and on the door.
The short wall, that has the closet, is where we have our entertainment unit, and a bunch of hooks, that would end up "behind the front door" when opened. I have random decorations hanging from the hooks, as we don't really use the front door, nor hang coats there.
The wall that divides the living from the kitchen, houses my upright piano, and a recliner chair, and the last wall is where we have our big couch (facing the TV) and end tables with table lamps. We also have a coffee table in front of the couch.
Decor wise, we have photos and nick nacks all over (top of piano, shelving unit, entertainment unit). And my taste is pretty eclectic, nothing is a matching set except for the couch and recliner. There are also several cat beds/pillows and toys strewed about...might as well include them considering they won't be going anywhere...

 

[posiepurrs]

In a perfect world I would get a dumpster and trash everything in our living room. The furniture is almost 30 years old and needs to be replaced. Walls are light blue - which I am tired of! We have 3 huge almost floor to ceiling windows in the room so it is bright. Until covid is over and I hit the lottery I guess not much will change. Cats have ruined some of the furniture but I keep it covered with quilts. We have carpet that I would gleefully rip out if I could put down hardwood flooring.

 

[klunick]

In a perfect world I would get a dumpster and trash everything in our living room. The furniture is almost 30 years old and needs to be replaced. Walls are light blue - which I am tired of! We have 3 huge almost floor to ceiling windows in the room so it is bright. Until covid is over and I hit the lottery I guess not much will change. Cats have ruined some of the furniture but I keep it covered with quilts. We have carpet that I would gleefully rip out if I could put down hardwood flooring.

That is exactly what we did last year! We had my husband's old furniture since he was in college (He's in his mid-50's). The couch was trashed and we had to stick a piece of wood under the cushions or you'd be sitting on the floor pretty much. Ugly side tables and coffee table. Walls were bare white since we had moved in 1997. Now it looks like something out of a magazine but homey too.

 

[susanm9006]

My living room is around 15 x 20 with a wall of windows overlooking the back yard and a massive white stone fireplace wall that separates the living room from the dining alcove. The floor is natural oak, walls are sort of a taupe and there is a coved ceiling. The furniture is all mismatched. A taupe sofa and chair that need to be replaced, and a grey rocker recliner that is newish. One of my favorite pieces of furniture is against one wall, a 1800’s maple slant front desk that I refinished many years ago. As far as art, only two pieces. A very large painting of a nature scene over the sofa and a colorful print on the wall.

 

[Elphaba09]

We have a small-ish living room that is painted a light French grey. There is a lot of navy blue and shades of grey with accents of puce. We have several pictures, original paintings, and other types of art around. besom (a type of broom) also hangs on the wall. My wedding bouquet, which was a decorated The tv sits on a Craftsman sideboard. (Our house is a 1923 Craftsman bungalow without most of the built-ins.) We have one light grey couch and a daybed that looks more like a large couch due to my reupholstery of it. The floors are original hardwood. I have no idea what type of wood it is, though. A cat tree, a baby bouncer, a floor pillow, one coffee table, a black ottoman, and a bunch of cat toys fill the room. Next to the door, we have one of those old eagle switchplate covers that we turned upside down to hang our keys from its wings. I did plan on getting some hooks, but the wings work nicely. I would absolutely call it eclectic and cozy.

 

[carebearbaby1]

I rent from my friend, my living room is brown with a green accent wall. She was going for a peacock theme. She said I can paint it but i haven't gotten to it. Some pictures on the walls, kind of eclectic, laminate hardwood floors, lots of cat toys.

 

[NY cat man]

Our living room is painted French Roast Coffee- a dark brown color- with the sides of the box bay windows painted black. All of the woodwork- baseboards and mouldings around doors and windows- is a gloss white. There was wall to wall carpeting, but we ripped that out and I installed a floating laminate floor. There is only one picture, of cats, naturally. Our love seat and sofa match, as do our recliner rockers, but nothing else does.

 

[aliceneko]

Our living room is cream and we have a hot pink sofa and blue chair to add some colour.

 

[miss eveliina]

Our living room is a decent size. It is grey with a burgundy accent wall. There are two windows side by side that face our front yard which is full of trees. It’s always entertaining to watch Eveliina on the lookout for squirrels and birds. We have a large fireplace that has the tv above it. Off to the side there is my hubby’s guitar sitting against the wall. There is a large brown leather sectional in front of the windows with a coffee table in the middle of the room along with a matching side table on one end of the couch. That side table has a white owl Scentsy burner on it. There is a wall that divides the living room and the kitchen where a leather love seat sits. It is a bit darker than the sectional. Eveliina’s cat house is off to the side of this instead of having an end table.
I set up an accent table along one wall that divides the main door way and the living room. I put two dark wooden camel lamps on there, a few books, one globe and a large trunk full of books underneath. I must say there is an assortment of globes through out the living room because I collect them. The floor is laminate which currently has a few kitty and puppy toys on it. Oh, and there is an extra large dog bed for our mastiff pup near the coffee table. As for photos, we don’t have many up at the moment. Just one above the accent table.

 

[misty8723]

Walls are white, hardwood floor. I don't decorate, we have some pictures up and tables with his stereo equipment. Also a book case, ottoman, and recumbent bicycle, and 2 lazy boy chairs. We don't entertain and when we did it was always in the family room.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

We were going to get new flooring this year before covid. Right now we are dealing with storm damage to the trees.

We ordered new couches right before covid. Those came by summer. They are a medium brown. My mom and stepdad gave us a lowes gift card for our anniversary that helped pay for two table lamps. I think I posted a picture. They are oil rubbed bronze with tan shades.

The walls are a sandy tan on top, green on the bottom and have a white chair rail. We have a double window looking into the backyard with brown curtains. The wood stove is in the opposite corner. The end tables, coffee table, tv & dvd stand cabinets are mahogany. Most of the pictures are of my kids in brown frames. One print has a rough wood frame. There’s a small Thomas Kinkade over the wood stove. I also have a wall curio my Grandpa made for Gram to display a doll collection she had. My aunt wanted the dolls but not the cabinet. I love it. That’s where I keep special things; including Noodles’ ashes.

 

[catapault]

Our living room is two steps down from the entry foyer / stairwell / hallway to kitchen. Two story high, ceiling angles to follow roof line, very bright with four skylights adjacent to each other, French doors on end wall to deck. There's a fan up by the ceiling - had to rent two levels of scoffolding for Himself to remove the fan that was there and replace it with this very much better one. Three bookcases - my father had designed them and had them built from Baltic oak that came across as hatch covers on a freighter. Also on that long wall there is a wood burning stove with 16 foot metal chimney. There is scarcely any wall between LR and DR, no wall at all to foyer. So not very much wall space at all. Beige / light tan walls, oak floors.

Furniture is black naugahyde - a sofa, matching love seat, and a somewhat Danish modern chair. In summer, now, sofa and love seat face each other with a low glass topped coffee table (actually a cast iron cooking stove base, very nice) and chair at one "end" of the two couches. In winter the furniture all rearranges to focus on the wood burning stove. Which is appreciated by all of the inhabitants, as you can see.



There's one large painting, egg tempera and sgraffito on masonite of Trillium erectum, painted by an artist who is a friend. So lifelike that people have mistaken it for a photograph enlarged to 2 ft X 4 ft.

A couple of small tables, little bookcase, bits and pieces, with decorative odds and ends that appealed to us.

 

[neely]

Our living room is traditional and more formal, i.e. we only use it for company with the exception of Carleton who uses it whenever his heart desires. It's painted a light shade of gray with slate blue accents for drapes and sofa. Hardwood floors with large area rug, pictures on the walls and my husband's antiques scattered throughout. We spend 99% of our time in the family room.

 

[mani]

I don't have one, as it's a yoga room. I have a sun room that serves as my living room.. it's long and thin and has lots of windows looking onto the garden. My style is definitely eclectic.

 

[DreamerRose]

My living room is red, white, and blue, but not the colors you are thinking of. The red is a burgundy, the white is beige, and the blue is a federal or blue/gray. The walls are a medium blue/gray, the couch is beige, an armchair is dark red, and lounge chair is medium blue. I have oriental rugs over the beige carpet that is a mix of all these colors. I like it a lot.

 

[jcat]

Redecorating the living room is way overdue; we haven't changed much of anything in the past 30 years. What you can see of the walls is painted white. One outside wall is oak paneled (for insulation), the wall opposite it is almost completely covered by a huge oak cabinet, and a third wall mainly consists of three windows (one double, two single) with a radiator underneath them. There's not much wall space to hang anything, though what is on them was made by me - a hooked rug of Etruscan lions and a large embroidered portrait of our late Boxer. The ceiling and floor are oak, and there's a large Oriental area rug. The furniture - brown leather and dark oak - is Old Flemish in style and rather heavy. The two long sofas have gotten very shabby, but are so comfortable that we hate the thought of replacing them. We don't like the boxy type of furniture in style right now. We added a dark brown recliner this past year, which Mowgli occupies more than anybody, though my husband likes the massage function and uses it once or twice a day.

 

[MonaLyssa33]

My living room is very eclectic. The walls are a tan/brown color. I was going to paint when I moved in, but I got lazy. The floors are hardwood with a teal-colored rug. I have a quilted art piece my grandma made hanging on one wall. It's based on a picture of her when she was in Norway. I have the picture on a bookshelf next to the quilt (picture below). The main windows are big and wide so it is kind of difficult to find curtains that work. I changed out the dark green ones the previous owner left for white so it would feel more open. The decor is eclectic as well. I have a few old footlockers, one I decoupaged with scrapbooking paper, the other two I haven't done anything with yet. I have a typewriter on top of the two undecorated footlockers. There's a fireplace with built in display cases above it. The room itself is long and sort of narrow so it's been difficult to find a good furniture placement.