Lopsided Living Room: The Big Reveal!

The boat is no longer tipping over in the lopsided living room. I repeat: The boat is no longer tipping over! Also, talk about working right down to the wire. I am linking this post in the last few hours of the extension. Give me three days; I’m done in three days. Give me six weeks; I’m done in six weeks. Extend that by three, and you’ll know where I’ll be. (Making terrible rhymes!) I am grateful that you all seem to stick with me to the bitter end. Thank you.

The lopsided living room ended up being a surprisingly difficult One Room Challenge project. With barely anything to repair and nothing to demo, I was left with pretty much pure decorating, and holy moly, I struggled. This room measures a whopping 26′ X 20′, and it has three competing focal points. To further complicate matters, new furniture was not included in the initial budget. Rearranging all of our old stuff around those focal points started to feel more like a riddle than a possibility. In the end, the furniture ended up pretty much right where it started. Speaking of where we started, let’s take a look back, shall we?

Before

Nine weeks ago, the living room looked like this:

It was…fine. I mean this room does have incredible original features, which makes it hard to screw up.

Before I painted the bookshelves black, the room was still…fine.

And looking waaaaaay back here’s what the living room looked like when we moved into BHH.

The green living room was very polarizing. Some people loved it, and others did not. I did not. We did not. BHH was built as a summer house and that decor felt heavy and oppressive–the antithesis of the relaxed and casual summer life.

After

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This room was 100% inspired by Gil Shafer III’s designs from his book, A Place To Call Home, specifically, this room:

Here is my interpretation as someone who is not a famous and gifted architect:

After a few misses, I landed on Agreeable Gray for the walls and Black Fox for the bookshelves and window sashes. Both colors are from Sherwin-Williams. Those sashes sure pop now!

The word I kept in my head during this entire project was balance. Of course, the pièce de résistance was the properly-sized vintage rug I found on Facebook Marketplace. However, after we wrestled that into place, my goal was to create more symmetry between the heavy left side of the room and the near-bare right side.

To simplify the left, I took away most of the colored throw pillows on the bench and tried to keep all of the bookshelf decor very neutral.

The cute drop leaf table came from a neighbor’s yard sale. I refinished the top and added a lamp that I found at an estate sale to make a little reading corner.

To add some weight to the right side of the room, Andy and I made a gallery wall around the TV, and I put a painted drop leaf table in front of the picture window.

I overthought how to hang our art for a month. Andy swooped in and cracked the code on the first try. The top left is from Cavallini & Co. I love their prints, and I have put a little something from Cavallini & Co in every room since the Breakfast Nook in 2017.

The lower right-hand piece is one of my father-in-law’s block prints. He is an excellent artist. Long-time readers might remember that we have a charcoal nude sketch in the Scary Bathroom, also from my father-in-law.

Since we are all living la vida pandemic, it is nice to have a place to keep a puzzle out full-time. Even on gloomy days, the light is excellent in front of the huge picture window, and putting a table here creates a different zone within the living room. A room this large can handle that. I tucked Millie’s bed into the back corner.

Pick a Focal Point, Any Focal Point

Even though there are three competing focal points, the fireplace is the true show stopper. What may not be clear is exactly how tall the mantel is. So, I jumped in a photo for scale. I am 5’4″.

With everything else going on in this room, I kept the mantel super simple–just a few berry branches cut from the yard and a gold-edged mirror–vintage from Andy’s grandparents. I wanted to create a place for the eye to rest.

That authentic Navajo Rug is something we have had in storage for years. We have never hung it up until now.

Everything Else

We have to talk about the new chairs. I know you see them, and I said I was not going to buy any furniture. After playing a real-life game of musical chairs with every single chair that we own, it became clear that we needed something different. Now, I am not one to buy stuff just to buy stuff. So, rest assured, all of our old chairs found new homes within BHH, and these little cuties came from Facebook Marketplace.

Since they are low, they leave a clear view of the fireplace, and when we want to sit in front of the fire, we’ll just turn them around. The pillows came from the guest room. Several years ago, I sewed the botanical covers from cloth napkins.

Note: I took one large chair out of the room for photos. It’s special to my son, so it stays.

I finished the faux bois on the remaining two bookcases and filled them with odds and ends from around the house. I have a bit of a duck decoy habit.

A Closer Look

Although I planned to stain and seal the drop-leaf puzzle table, I discovered that it was a factory painted piece, and getting down to decent bare wood was impossible. Instead, I painted it Roycroft Bronze Green by Sherwin-Williams, a color I used on the floor of the Scary Bathroom, the guest bath, and on the mountain mural in the Cabin Vibes Bedroom.

I don’t want to talk about my dirty windows. I’m pulling the “My house is over 135 years old” card. Outside of photos, the view is fine. Let’s pretend we don’t see anything wrong, ok?

After I painted the puzzle table, I painted this little side table the same color. It started as a plant stand in the breakfast nook.

Confession time: The little side table was another refinishing fail. The top and bottom are veneer, and the legs are pine. Unfortunately, I sanded too far into the veneer, so I painted the whole thing and pretended that I meant it that way. Now that it’s done, I’m not mad about it.

Parting Shots

Final Thoughts

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I struggled a lot with this room. Heck! Weeks one through five, I wasn’t sure I would ever get it together. Two people, Teri Moore and Lauren Caron, were my secret weapons, and I owe them a heartfelt thank you. Both took part in the One Room Challenge as guest participants, and I will link their projects below.

Teri, a professional interior designer (T. Moore Home), pulled me out of the people-pleasing corner I backed myself into when she said, “You are not designing this room for a client. You are the client. The moment she said that, I snapped back to reality and made decisions that made our family happy instead. Check out her adorable classic black and white bathroom makeover. She nailed the vintage charm.

Lauren, also an interior designer (Studio Laloc), saved my sanity more than once by answering questions about scale and color. Few people mix prints, patterns, and colors as skillfully as Lauren. She offered invaluable objective advice along the way. Specifically, she suggested army green for the tables, and I ran with it. It looks so good with the rug, and I am thrilled. Lauren is still finishing up her dining room for the One Room Challenge, but it is a stunner already.

As always, thank you to Linda, the One Room Challenge team, and media partner, Better Homes & Gardens. Twice a year, I lose my mind for six-ish weeks and then emerge on the other side a little worse for wear but with one more room checked off the BHH to-do list. No regrets.

Finally, for more One Room Challenge fun, be sure to visit the finale of the High Point Market projects from the featured designers and all of the room reveals from the guest participants too.

Thank you for reading and for being my friends. You make my job and my life a lot more fun.

Start at the beginning: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5

PS: I took Millie’s crate out of the room for the photos, but she has not been displaced! She will sleep by the roll-top desk during the holiday season since the Christmas tree will fill her corner.