Apartment Tour: Living Room

Continuing the apartment tour today with the living room!

I really love this living room because it is truly the heart of the apartment and you can't get to anything else without going through it. At our old apartment the living room was very big (by apartment standards) and felt cold and not cozy. I realize it is really strange to say a room is "too big" in an apartment but it's weird, our old place was really just too big for us. I'll regret saying that if we ever end up having kids in the city. The problem we had was we really didn't have furniture that fit well or had furniture that was simply occupying space that we didn't use. There were times at our old place when we didn't set foot in the living room because it was separated from everything else. The new living room feels like the exact opposite. A cozy place you really want to hangout in.

We have two nice windows, like we did at the old place, but these ones don't get quite as much sunlight (they face north with a not-so-lovely view of the apartments on the other side of the building). There is a radiator cover which I love for having extra display space and we got the white shelf in the center from IKEA. All those little gray boxes are serving massive storage purposes. Printer paper and extra ink, flashlights, extension cords, and other outlet things, games, and keepsakes, etc. Pretty and functional. 

This is the couch we purchased this summer. It is our first actual real piece of quality furniture (non-IKEA) and we love it. It's deep and cozy, fits three comfortably, and four if you're intimate, and it has a pull-out sleeper bed for visitors. We didn't have a color choice so while I generally like the color, it is a tiny big light for my preference. So we purchased the 5-year stain warranty and put a moratorium on eating on the couch.

Dan did a nice job hanging these shelves from IKEA above the couch. I like this concept better than a typical gallery wall because I can rearrange and swap things easier. Also, less wall holes overall.

Close-up of these two little guys because they are so cute! During this apartment tour, you can play "find the hedgehogs" as they are literally everywhere.

Over on the other side of the room is the dining table. We have it pushed against the wall for more floor space but there is plenty of room to pull it out and add two chairs on the other side.

Dan recently hung two more of those white IKEA shelves above the table and I got some things in Kansas to display, plus our cute little pumpkins. That white thing hanging down has photo clips on it. It's meant to hang over a door but it doesn't fit any of our doors so I put it there for the time being. 

We still have our sideboard/buffet where I have all of our nice display dishes and heirloom-y type things. I'm not sure what will happen to this overtime as I recognize it will be a nightmare if kids come along.

For now, I've got that big chalkboard up there which has been really fun for changing with seasonal decor. I attached my season-changing wreath from Hopscotch & Honey to it so it gets highlighted a little more. Obviously, right now we have all our Halloween items out on display.

That's it for the living room! Next week I'll share the bedrooms. 

See the Entryway tour here.