One Last Look: Living Room

Before I start posting about our new little house in the city, I want to take one last look at our old place. First up, here's the living room (and dining room) of our old apartment. The biggest change I made to this space was to remove an existing closet to open up the space. At the same time, I installed shelves and cabinetry to give me storage to replace the closet:

The sofa sits where the old closet used to be. Our Jasper sofa from Room & Board has held up well, and luckily, it just fits in the new place. The coffee table and bamboo chairs are hand-me-downs from my parents. The side table was a street score from my husband's bachelor days. The navy lamp is from Mottega and the brass lamp is a vintage find. The John Robshaw pillows were a major steal at a thrift store in Southampton.

The "entryway" is really just the space inside the front door: We kitted it out with hooks and a shoe rack (which had been removed to show the apartment for sale). We painted the door black with high gloss oil paint and I love the way it came out. 

The wall of shelving was inspired by a story I saw in Blueprint magazine. The upper shelves are Elfa from the Container Store and the lower cabinets are from IKEA. I added the column of shallower cabinets at the right later on; they are also from IKEA. Now that we've moved, I miss all this storage desperately.

This shot shows you the transition from the living/dining space into the rest of the apartment. The kitchen is at the left and the hallway leads to the bedroom (on the right) and the bathroom (at the left). 

The "dining room" in our apartment was just the other side of the living room. The ceiling fan was oddly placed here (instead of at the center of the room), and spray painting the blades white was one of the biggest bang-for-your buck (and immediately satisfying) projects. We got the dining chairs off of Craigslist and built new seats for them. The dining table is IKEA (also via Craigslist) and has a leaf that expands the table to be quite large. We hosted many, many wonderful dinners at this table--the largest a party of 10 to celebrate my mother's birthday.

The desk was also a Craigslist score (are you catching on to a theme here?)--it was a perfect solution for me to have a workspace that we could fold away out of sight. The painting above the desk is one of my most-prized possessions: A painting by my late grandfather, which we received as a wedding gift from my parents. 

If you want to see the progress of the apartment, read on for some "before" and in transition shots.

The next two shots are of the living room immediately after the closet was removed. I cannot believe how empty the apartment looks!

And here are two shots of the apartment before I moved in. Boy, was that closet awkward! It's hard to see in this shot, but the closet was a trapezoid shape that protruded into the room and actually blocked one of the windows. The staging furniture is charming, no?