A Tour of the New Livingroom

Today I wanted to take you on a tour of our new living room and show you how far it has come. It's been quite an adventure and there is still a ways to go but I am having a lot of fun with it!

When we first bought the chalet the living room/ dining room was a teeny tiny little room with the southern side being composed completely of a huge glass door leading out to a balcony. There was an old smoky fireplace in the corner and the chimney just pulled all the heat out of the room. 

The two doors in the corner that led to the kitchen and landing collided with each other and every time the wind blew outside the drafts would blow across the room. (By the way, this house came completely furnished with what you see. A whole house of stuff I didn't need!)

It was cold, it was cramped and it just didn't work! Frenchie said right after we moved in that the first thing we had to do to be able to live in this house was make the living room bearable. We decided to expand the room out over the balcony. Now the balcony was nice and we did like it a lot but it was not nice enough to forego a bigger living area! 

So last year we spent in a construction zone. 

The whole line of the roof had to be altered to make it work but the men we hired did a fantastic job of it. I have been around construction my whole life. I grew up with two brothers who built houses and a father who did a lot of construction also. I have never seen anybody build as soundly as these men did. Then they filled the whole thing in with this nice insulation made from wood filler. This room is a snug as can be now!

So now I have this nice new room but I have done little to decorate it.

We have this huge wall of windows.

Great for letting in that southern light but impractical for curtains. I am considering roman shades.

What do you think?

We put these little spots in between each set of windows to highlight our paintings we bought in Montreal. We stumbled across this old painter in the square in old town and fell in love with his work. The two pieces work perfectly in these tiny areas.

There is plenty of room for a dining room table now. We even plan on buying a bigger table. We like to entertain and this is a nice spot for a good meal with friends. The sun shines through the windows making it a bright and cheery room. 

On the table lies the pieces for my next project. The hanging of the star lights.

Frenchie bought these for me a few years back when I fell in love with them at Ikea. They were in our apartment in Mulhouse and I can't wait to get them up here. I hope to get to this very soon!

At the top of the red beam that runs down the center of the room (this is where the old wall was) we have stretched a tension wire and hung long black curtains. They push back out of the way when not in use but as you can see, the light shines so brightly on the television. So when we want to watch a movie...

 They can be pulled out to turn our living room into a cinema! 

The old drafty fireplace has been replaced with an efficient wood burning stove. We do almost all of our heating with the two wood burning stoves in the house. I am amazed at how warm they can make the place and how the heat will linger. No more cold drafts running through the room!

We use these pressed wood logs in our stove. They are not wood pellets. This is just a piece of one. They are full sized logs that are made from the leftover sawdust at sawmills. They work great! We also use ones that are made from the compressed bark that comes from the trees. These are nighttime logs that burn long and steady to keep a warmth in the house through the night.

 And here is the corner where we had the colliding doors. As you can see one is gone now, which helps a lot. We still need to do trim work on there and eventually plan on installing a sliding door here so we can close it if we wish but have it out of the way when we want.

 And this is Frenchie's office area right now. None of the other rooms in the house are finished. Each has something that has to be done to it and everything is in flux. We still haven't decided exactly what is going to happen in all the other rooms so for now here is where he works. Eventually this will be where the buffet goes. The rectangle up above his desk to the right is actually the original window of the first part of the house and it looks into the stairwell going up to the attic. We plan on putting a new window in here to help with the light in that area.

And here it our TV area. Again this is all temporary. The shelves are slotted for my studio and we are hoping to get something with possibly some bookshelves on each side. Still in the decided stage on this area.

And last but not least, here is my poor coffee table. It is good and sturdy but it needs help. I have been mulling over what to do with this table for over a year and I still can't make up my mind. Paint it? Mosaic it? Stencil it? Who knows what I will decide in the end but you will all get to see it when it happens! Any bright ideas?

So my tour is finished. As you can see it is still a room without much of a personality stamped on it. An empty slate...Over the next few months I hope to rectify that. I already have a few projects planned and now you can watch this room develop with me.

Hope you have all had a wonderful Easter weekend and wishing you a bright and sunny week!