The Unfinished Living Room!

Here's a couple before pics first. You can see how the kitchen and the living room were one big room. While you would think building a wall inbetween the two rooms would make everything seem smaller, it actually made our space much bigger. Our problems with the big room were toys and other "living" things were easily scattered across the kitchen. We wanted to define the spaces so that they could be used each for their own purposes.

And taadaa! The new living is so great! We still have a desk we're refinishing to put in here and two new endtables we built that we have to finish as well, and pictures on the walls I know. Hmm.

The white furniture is from Ikea, and the leather chair is from JCP. It's not new, we had it before the remodel.

And this is the new wall, with a sneak peek into the kitchen. We have a ton of books, but no where to put a bookshelf. Plus bookshelves are always terrorized by unobserved children (which, of course, mine never are, but just in case some other children come over! HA!). So I went to Lowes, bought some boards and brackets, painted the boards, and hung them all up with some heavy duty wood nails into the studs. It was only a day project, which is awesome. And then I was so excited to started unpacking all the books. (1/3 of which I got rid of!)
(Oh and those baskets are going to go into our endtables as drawers.)This is one of my new pillows. I still have more to make, but this one was so easy. I didn't sew, except for the buttons. I used some kind of hem tape to put it together. It's a burlap fabric and its based off of a PB pillow I liked.
And these are the two other fabrics that I have to make pillows with. I'm still looking for some kind of geometric print for a little more texture (since everything else in the room is solid colors).
This is the other side of the room, looking into the hall. We had a friend of Jeremy's build this entertainment center and he does absolutely beautiful work. If you need something built (and you'll see more examples of his work in the rest of my house), let me know and I'll get you his information.

The floors (I love them!) are another find on craigslist. We decided to go with laminate, but we wanted something dark and real looking for cheap. These were .89 cents a sq. ft. which is an awesome price. In order to keep bugs out, when we were laying down the floor I sprinkled borax everywhere. It's worked great! And the rug also really excited me. I needed a 8x10 for the space. We stopped by the PB outlet in Gaffney on the way home from GA and they were just happening to have a 40% off rug sale. Yea! Jeremy and I agreed on this one, and it was only $250. I wanted something kind of plain and neutral so that I could switch out pillows and/or curtains and not have to buy a new rug too.
Here's a close-up of the curtains. I picked out these long before we even started work on the house. They are from Jcp and lined to help keep outside air out.
And finally, a shot from the front door! Feels so good to be able to live in our living room again!