Living Room Mock-Ups

So, there's a major amount of things I want to do in the living room. Here's just a taste of that.

We'll start with my windows. I hate the blinds. Hate. But they're incredibly useful and we can't modify them. So here's the plan. I want to put up curtains that will hide them, but remain perma-in place. Here's my mock-up of that.

The curtains will also hide the ugly AC cord for the most part and we can pin it back behind them. Curtain colors: Gray! I'm thinking a medium gray tone and I'll probably make my own curtains since I'm on a serious budget.

Beyond that, I want to make some simple tie-backs to pull the blinds together when they're open which will serve two purposes: 1) hiding them better, 2) not allowing them to shake and slap during breezes.

The door entry is awful. I hate the way the coat rack looks, even trimmed to just seasonal coats. And I really don't like the chaos that is all the shoes, plus we have nowhere real nice to put our wallets/keys, ect. I edited right over my entry picture (ooops!) so I can't show off the ugly.

But we plan to buy lumber and build something like this.

I have a silver leaf tray for collecting keys/wallets that could sit on top. Shoes could be on the shelves, jackets in baskets on the upper shelves. I'd likely make some sort of cloth cover-up (like a furniture curtain) to hide the sloppy shoes! In addition, this furniture would allow us to set a lamp on the top and have doorway lighting.

The last thing we'll talk about right now. My ugly TV center.

Excuse the toddler fingerprints. We have a swivel TV stand. I want to add knobs to the cabinets. And I want to build an entertainment center around this thing! We're going to leave space on either side of the TV so that the stand can still swivel. Paint the cabinet + portion we build, black. Backing will likely be black as well, but I've made my mock-up in shades of gray so you can see the various parts.

The top is potential crown molding. The light gray is "backing", the black is the frame. And the dark gray is solid cabinets. Silver rounds are handles, although we have no idea what hardware we want. I think this could be relatively easy but make a big impact on the living room!

Future Living Room Discussions:

Media Center (DVD/Gaming Storage + Cover-up)
Furniture Rehaul (Painting)
Sofa Covers
Wall Art