When it's time to change...

As I mentioned in this post, I totally rearranged all of the furniture at 2am last night...totally on a whim.  Here's how this all came about:

I was standing in the entry and I looked back at the fireplace and a vision popped into my head of a totally different furniture arrangement.  Saying I had a vision sounds silly...I know.  It started with us realizing we had a lot more space to work with than we previously thought.  I looked at Tony and said something along the lines of: "Yanno, this room (the den) is a lot bigger than we realized...we probably could have fit a dining room table in here.  (insert furniture rearranging itself in my vision) I even think we could have the couch face the fireplace."  He looked at me with a face that said "well, too bad...it's already done" told me yah, we probably could have done that, oh well...and went to bed.

I went back to working on pictures and continued to mull over the furniture thing...should I, shouldn't I...I couldn't decide.  It was one of those things that I knew had to be done first in order for Tony to realize it needed to be done.  I don't think he would have wanted to go through the work of moving everything around when it was working perfectly fine the way it was.  So, I finally decided this was my time to do, and I was going to do it alone...at 2am.  This is clearly another one of my "brilliant" ideas.

I must have been overcome with some super human powers, because I can tell you right now, I could barely lift the china cabinet when Tony and I were moving it around together...I have no idea how I moved it myself without dying, but I did!  I know myself well enough to know that if I don't finish a project I will never come back to it, and it will sit abandoned and unfinished until I force myself to finish it.  So, I have trained myself to always finish projects in one sitting...no matter how tired I am or how much I want to be done with it.  Obviously there are exceptions, but that is generally the case.  So, even though I was exhausted, ready for bed and just all around tired I knew if I didn't finish it Tony wouldn't be very happy when he woke up :)

After rearranging the den, I started pulling furniture from the kitchen, and I had furniture I didn't need in the den anymore, which allowed me to do other things with that furniture, which eventually led to the entire living area getting a little revamping.  If you don't remember what it looked like before, here are a few quick pictures:

During the walk through.

After most of the furniture was added

Before rearranging.

Here are the results of my wild night of furniture rearranging:

I took the chairs out of the kitchen and put them in the den in place of the blue chair I painted and upholstered.  (picture later).  These chairs might be temporary, but for now I like them, and I like that they match the couch almost perfectly.  The chairs were included with the house because we figured we might as well try.  Maybe eventually they will be replaced with a wingback and another chair, but for now we like these in here.

All of the furniture has been moved towards the fireplace and a more intimate seating area has been created.  I was worried about the back of the couch facing the front door, but the couch has such a pretty shape that it doesn't look bad at all.  We will add some sort of sofa table behind the couch, but even without it, it doesn't look too bad.

The new, more intimate seating area.

Yup...that's me in my robe this morning :)  The kitchen table is now in the den/dining room, and I went ahead and added a leaf to it.  Since the kitchen table chairs are now across from the couch, I used these chairs that were Tony's grandma's.  2 of them we already had in random rooms as fillers until we got different chairs, and much to my surprise, when I went into the garage looking for other furniture I didn't know about, I found 2 more!

I moved the enormous (and really heavy) china cabinet all by myself, which kind of scared Tony when I showed him this morning :)

So, this piece of fabric was a random late addition.  I purchased it for something...I don't know what, but I loved it and figured I'd find something for it.  I folded it in half and folded up the ends and threw it on the table to add some color.  It obviously won't stay like this, but I eventually might sew an actual runner for the table.  For now, it will do.

Hopefully the overexposed sliding doors you can't see (thankfully), will soon be replaced with french doors out to the patio :)

So, now that the tv is no longer in the den, I had this lovely table I purchased from Crate&Barrel and nowhere to put it...until I realized we still hadn't decided on an entry table, and I tried it out, and sure enough...it looks great!  I love the way the woodwork on the table sort of mimics the lines of the marble in the floors.

The blue chair I painted and re-covered that was originally done for the den is now in the living room.  I put it in there temporarily at first, but I actually like it in there.

I moved the new Crate&Barrel chest side table over by the blue chair (it was originally next to the sectional) and put the side table that was in the den next to the sectional.  Tony things the chest is a little too big for that area, but I really like it there.  Oh, and the computer on the side table is temporary :)  As is the tv tray.  P.S. check out our new printer's tray (above the tv tray) that I recently found at Mission Road Antiques for just $30.  It is an authentic printer's drawer, and Tony has already started adding trinkets to it. 

There are still lots and lots of things to do, but I feel like we made a big step in the right direction moving everything around and the den/dining room feels sooo much more comfortable and homey, whereas before it just felt stiffed and very placed.  Currently, there is no table in the kitchen now so that is a new need that we didn't have before, but hopefully we can find something more playful and fun for the kitchen now that it isn't the only formal dining area.