So no big deal but Josh and I bought our very first house this summer! And honestly making our little house into a home has pretty much taken up all of my time, attention and money over the last couple months.
I mean, moving house is hard in general. But moving house after having to get rid of most of our furniture when we moved in with my parents, was quite tough. We pretty much had to furnish our place from scratch, and didn’t have a lot of time to peruse cute boutiques at the weekends. So it means that 99% of our furniture is from IKEA. But IKEA is awesome so I’m totally ok with that.
And seeing as my life has been taken over by trips to B&Q and scrolling through Pinterest for shelving styling inspo lately, I thought I would let you in on the action. And what better way than with a new house tour!
This is my first foray into any kind of Interiors post so it’s new territory for me. I have no idea what I’m doing here. But I thought it could be cute to start with my living room and post a few pics of what we’ve done with it.
Oh and this is definitely not a ~polished~ Instagram-ready kind of situation. I have cables coming out of the TV I haven’t sorted yet, plants that are dying on me but I refuse to throw out, and I still haven’t bought any lighting for the whole house… But it’s real life!
If you like this kind of thing, please let me know and I’ll continue with other rooms in my house!
A Tour Of Our Compact Industrial Living Room
Fun fact: I bought my house off-plan. And the closer it got to the completion date, the more worried I got that our open plan living area was going to be too small for us. Don’t get me wrong our coach house is perfect for us in all other areas – 2 large bedrooms, an ensuite in the master and a family bathroom with a bath (a non-negotiable for me). It’s in the perfect area with a great school and a park. But the kitchen / dining / living room is compact.
We decided from the onset that we wanted to try to create two very different areas in the room – a practical kitchen-diner and a cosy little living room. And one of the ways we did this was by using different flooring. The kitchen-diner half of the room is wooden flooring and the living room is carpet, and I think it really helps to create two separate areas in a small open plan room.
Quick heads-up: our house is new build so we can’t actually paint the walls yet. But I don’t think I really want to in the living room anyway so I’m happy with how it looks at the moment.
Let’s start with our sofa. We were on a budget so I wasn’t willing to pay out mega-bucks for a sofa. But also, our last one was £60 second-hand on gumtree and we ended up having it for 4 years. So I wanted a good quality sofa I could snuggle up on and watch a film with a cuppa.
Naturally it was IKEA to the rescue and we opted for the VIMLE sofa with a chaise lounge. I originally wanted a corner sofa but as the space is quite small it wouldn’t really have worked. So this was the next best thing. But I really love it. It’s comfy and has extra storage under the chaise lounge for board games and throws. Y’know, the cosy-night-in essentials.
As the sofa is grey and the walls are magnolia and the carpet is oatmeal, it all looked a bit meh at first. So I made sure to inject colour with some bright cushions. I didn’t really have a colour palette in mind, I just wanted to jazz it up a bit. So I’ve gone with a blue spotty cushion, plain yellow cushion and multicoloured painted cushion from John Lewis. As well as a tiger cushion from Debenhams and a bright pink cushion with (another) tiger from Flying Tiger. Apparently we have a tiger theme.
Chuck in the monochrome JOHANNE throw from IKEA and I think it’s a lovely spot to curl up and binge Netflix.
Above the sofa is the gallery wall we have wanted for ages! We’ve never had the right kind of room for a gallery wall so were quite excited by the prospect of putting together a wall of art that represented both of us.
There’s a big Back To The Future print as it’s my favourite film and one for Rocky, Josh’s fave. There’s a big Alvvays print, a band we love and saw live last year, and fan art for Stranger Things, a TV show we always watch together. Oh and a Brooklyn postcard because we love it there. But there’s also a bit of our individuality thrown in. Some colourful art I love (the New York one from Eleanor Bowmer and the Pool Party one from Red Gate Arts) and a pretty San Francisco print. Then there’s a World Cup poster and a few more band posters for Josh.
I decided to use lots of different frames as I don’t like things looking too matchy. And voila, our gallery wall is complete! I like it a lot. It definitely adds more colour to this corner of the room too.
A window and radiator takes up the far wall of our living room but I’ve tried to make it a bit more homey with wooden blinds and some trinkets and treasures on the windowsill.
I’m not one of these people that doesn’t like any clutter, I think your home should have lots of little things you love that make you happy. So yes my windowsill has the little boot mugs from when we drank gluwein at the Wroclaw Christmas Market in 2017.
Time for the opposite wall to the sofa, aka the TV wall.
We’ve had our TV on a glass stand for the last few years, as we’ve been renting and haven’t been able to put it on the wall. So now was our chance! It also seems a bit safer when you have a toddling little human trying to pull things down at any opportunity. And we decided to create a bit of an entertainment unit around it in order to provide as much storage as possible in a small space. (Yes, I will sort out the cables soooooonnnn.)
We looked at lots of options and decided to go for IKEA’s FJALLBO range. (Of course it’s IKEA again!). They do lots of different storage options in this range so we got to create our own little combo. Underneath the TV we have the FJALLBO TV bench, which we store all of our DVDs, PlayStation games, some of Indi’s toys and some books. It also gives us a ledge to put our games consoles on, along with a plant and some photo frames.
Then there’s the FJALLBO bookcase we’ve put next to it, perfect for our record player, records, books, more photo frames, more plants and other little trinkets. Obviously including our ramen print from Etsy.
Then we’ve topped it with FJALLBO wall shelves for more book storage. I’ve tried to do that oh-so-Pinterest thing of arranging books by colour to get a bit of a rainbow effect. I think it looks cool but I’m aware that it’s going to affect my book-buying habits… I need more green books!
The thing about living with a boy though, is that often your Instagram-perfect visions are ruined by random stuff. So also on this shelf is an old Nintendo 64 and some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles paraphernalia. It is what it is.
Oh and you might notice in the photos, we also have a retro drinks globe (that’s right, there’s a bar inside!). My nan actually bought it for my grandad in the 70’s and I have memories of playing on the bottom part when I was a toddler. So when they were getting rid of it I asked if we could have it. It’s literally my favourite bit of furniture, I love it.
Ok, so that’s our Living Room folks! What do you think?
I think we’ve done quite a good job of making it look cosy but also colourful, with lots of representations of our personalities. And y’know pretty much all from IKEA on a budget!
Let me know if you enjoyed this post and I’ll keep going with other rooms in the house as we complete them.
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