Living Room Shuffle

So the folks in my home are a bit under the weather. My nose is getting a bit tender from wiping and I'm getting sick of hearing myself sniffle. I can't imagine how everyone around me must feel about it. But none of us are just flat out sick...yet. I fear I may be down and out this weekend. Maybe it will just improve from here. Here's hoping.

On Wednesday I had the carpets cleaned. The guy was scheduled to come at 9:00 am, so as soon as the kids left for school I started moving furniture out of the way. I emptied the living room of everything but the piano, moved all the toys in the boys' room onto their beds, and cleared the family room as best I could. Then I quickly vacuumed through each room. I made sure the bathroom was tidied up in case he got a glimpse in there, and then I proceeded to clean up breakfast and tidy the kitchen. By this time I had worked up quite a sweat. It was after 9 at this point, so I finished up what I was working on and decided to take a break and check Facebook. When it was almost 10 and he still wasn't here, I decided to give them a call. Turns out, in the process of switching over from the 2011 appointment book to the new 2012 one, my appointment did not get transferred. I really did not want to put all the furniture back and do it all over again another day, so I reluctantly took a time slot later in the day for about an hour before my kids were due home from school. Not ideal. Five kids, wet carpet. None of this is really relevant to this post, except to tell you that they were so sweet and apologetic. They gave me a big discount on the cleaning and even let me use the big fans for drying the carpet overnight. What IS relevant, is that having all the furniture moved out of the room meant that it was very easy to put everything back in a different place. I think that's really the key with rearranging furniture: take everything out and start with a clean slate.

A week ago my living room looked like this:



Today it looks like this:


We are loving the new furniture arrangement. I pulled in the lamp from the guest room, put the curtains back up, pulled the throw pillows back out, and shuffled shuffled shuffled.

A few months ago I painted the room in the two tones of gray and painted the trim white. Now I'm agonizing over what color to paint the stairway and the hallway. (And the dining room too, for that matter.)



The living room, kitchen, dining room area used to all be a neutral tan-ish color. There was so much beige/wood tones/tan going on in this house it made me crazy: carpet, cabinets, walls, piano, furniture, trim. So I don't want to turn around and just paint everything gray now. Suggestions? I have a whole palette of neutral, lighter colors picked out. I think any of them would work, actually. But I'm finding it hard to commit. I actually think it's easier to work with stronger colors, but I'm loving how the lighter colors brighten the place up.

Linking up to Feathered Nest Friday