2 Hour Living Room Makeover

Thanks for visiting "Loving What You Have". This blog is devoted to everything that is HOME and everything that is you and your life style. My name is Jay and I would like to share with you a new way of looking at your home. Seeing your surroundings differently. Essentially, re-Seeing your spaces and what you have in a way that, hopefully, will make you fall in love with your home for the first time or quite possibly, all over again.

Loving What You Have is about making the ordinary appear extraordinary. It's about understanding why you do not like a particular piece of furniture or furniture arrangement and why that piece of furniture does not like where it is in your home. It's about an intimate relationship between the built environment, that is your home, and the furnishings that occupy the spaces in your home. I believe there is a delicate and dynamic dialog between furniture and the spaces they take residence in and if you ignore that dialog there can be discord and chaos. Think of furniture as having human characteristics. When I experience a room that is not engaging, inviting or simply not attractive it is usually because the furniture is not engaging with the room, engaging with the window placement, engaging with the entrance to the room, engaging with the other furniture in the room, engaging with the adjacent room, and engaging with the architecture in general.

The pictures above are an example of Loving What You Have. The first photo is a "before" picture of a living room viewed from the entry hall, dining room and adjacent kitchen of a home in Minneapolis. When one walks into this room they would see this exact picture. This room is large - the entire width of the home. When I first saw the room it seemed out of balance, void of detail and unapproachable. In fact, the furniture appeared unhappy, a bit depressed and not interested in engaging me, the viewer. The large picture windows struggled to "fit in" to the ensemble as if standing naked in front of two laughing sofas. And the orientation of the sofas suggested that the large floor plant in the corner of the room was the focal point - clearly balance, focus and a sense of cohesiveness were void in this room. All of the components of a great room existed - but not placed where they wanted to be.

In the "after" picture the sofas switch to the opposite corner of the room, following the order of the windows as if to say "I'll have what they're having". Following the order of the architecture creates a hierarchy between the architecture and the furniture - the architecture being the precedent and the furnishings reinforcing and drawing attention to the same order. Not shown in the "after" picture is a low book case (left of photo against a wall). Before, one sofa had it's back to the bookcase. Now the sofas "include" the bookcase as part of the guest list of furnishings. The once hidden Noguchi table is now front and center and the Eames lounge chair comes out of hiding from the corner. The 8 x 10 carpet is rotated 90 degrees and the large floor plant changes corners with the branch arrangement.

The only items purchased for this transformation were four (4) royal purple accent pillows (TJ Max - HomeGoods - down filled) and fresh flowers for the cocktail table. The furnishings actually appear happier and much more inviting as if welcoming guests with open arms. Loving What You Have is about understanding how to re-See the things you have and making your home more beautiful, more functional and more livable!   Jay Nuhring