Our Living Room Makeover: We Made Do With Our Old Stuff. Sheltering at Home Week 49

A living room makeover — while sheltering at home. Week 49. 

We did it! Jon and I finally wrestled our comfy old living room furniture into place in our newly remodeled living room.

We had hoped to buy new furniture for for the remodeled space, but the pandemic shut-down has kept us close to home and out of shops and stores.

A Make-Do Makeover

So what you see here is a makeover that makes do with furniture and art work that has been in our house for decades.

The remodel, which we undertook way back in 2019, has been done for months. But it’s taken some doing to get window treatments installed and the living room makeover underway.

The actual moving of the furniture and hanging up of the art work was the easy part. Deciding what to put where was the challenge. Especially with two different people with two different sets of opinions living in the same house.

One thing we did agree on — to keep the walls and window treatments simple and put the focus on our art work and heirloom — okay, well-worn — furniture.

Our living and dining rooms look good now, and that’s mostly because they are done and no longer crying out to be put in order. They are calm, livable spaces at last.

Also, there are no brassy old lamps looking for a place to hang out. (They’re upstairs, cluttering up our daughter’s old bedroom.)

Banished to the Den

And there’s no oversized painting inherited from the oversized walls of Jon’s parents. (That painting’s been banished to the den, where it’s keeping company with the Falconer family heirlooms: My grandfather’s ice delivery tongs. My grandmother’s darning egg.)

So, instead of crying out, “Come fix me,” our living room now whispers, “Come. Have a seat.”

Jon and I are still sheltering at home these days, so we haven’t been able to invite friends and neighbors in to take a look at our handiwork. This post is as close as we’ll get for a while to throwing a housewarming party.

See more pictures of this remodel. Coming soon: A close-up look at how we arranged the art work and collectibles in these rooms.