My Living Room Mistake and Plans To Fix It

My plans to make our formal living room a more casual space that my family can relax in.

So if you’re a regular reader around here you might be thinking wayment {yes that’s how you spell it LOL} didn’t you give this room a makeover already?

{How perceptive of you}

The answer is yes. Last year I made over my formal living and dining room for the 2018 spring One Room Challenge. At that point, we’ve been in our current home for 4 months.

But, fast forward about 10 months since the makeover reveal and I realized I made a big mistake!

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The mistake, I did not design this room with how we live as a family in mind. Which is very relaxed and casual pretty much all the time!

The fact that we hardly ever use this space is proof of that.

Good design to me is not only creating a space that looks good. But, also functions well for the people who live there.

So while this makeover is pretty and a major improvement on what the room looked like before the makeover {exhibit A below}.

It just doesn’t work for us.

So I ask hubby and the kids why they never use the living room and the answers are as follows…

• It’s too “fancy” {they struggled to find the wording but that’s what it boiled down to}
• We don’t want to break anything on the shelf/ We’re afraid we might break your blue and white stuff
• I don’t want to mess it up
• I might spill my drink {although hot chocolate on the white couch in our family room is ok to them, make it make sense LOL}
• The’res nothing to do in there

Formal Living Room Refresh Plans

Keeping what my family told me in mind. I decided to take the formal out of our formal living room and create a more casual and relaxed space.

Now since this is a refresh and not a makeover, most of the big pieces are staying. And I will be relying on decor and accesories to bring a relaxaed feel to the room.

{BTW if you follow me on Instagram you would have seen me talk about some of these plans alread in my Instagram stories}

To get the casual look I’m after, here are the changes I plan to make.

1- Swap out the rug. I love the blue rug that was in our living room {I moved it to Kayla’s room for the $100 room challenge last month} but I definitely wanted a more neutral rug that will give me more flexibility with my decor choices.

REPLACE WITH: I plan to replace it with a natural fiber rug like that the one I had in our last house minus the fringe {does not work when you have a cat}.

2- Get rid of the shelves. Honestly, while these shelves are nice and worked great in our previous home. They’re a little overbearing in this tiny living room.

I only used them in the original makeover because I already had them on hand. Plus they apparently make the kids nervous about breaking stuff in here. So they’re getting the boot.

REPLACE WITH: The plan is to replace it with a console table {I will be using my navy table that’s currently in our family room for the time being}. With the addition of a large piece of vibrant artwork over it.

3- Add Some Greenery. To add some height and color to the room, I’ll replace the little brown thrifted table in the corner with a faux fiddle fig plant.

The only thing that’s still up in the air for me is the curtains. I LOVE THEM. But! They do add to the formal feeling in the room. I’ll need to figure that one out.

New Pieces I Plan To Use

So those are the major changes I plan to make. The rest of the changes will revolve around using decor I already own, maybe a couple of new pillows, and baskets.

I think these inexpensive changes will give our formal living room a welcoming vibe that hopefully encourages us to hang out in there more often without any fear we will mess up or break something.

Here are some of the pieces I’ve sourced so far. {click the photo for details}

I will share my progress as I make the changes I listed above.

So be sure to sign up for the newsletter so you can stay updated and follow me on Instagram because I’m sure I’ll be sharing behind the scenes stuff on my Instagram stories.