Darnell Cottage “QUARAN-Tour” : Living Room!

Next room on our “Quaran-tour” is our living room!

If our kitchen is the heart of our home, then our living room is the hangout.
For our cosy cottage, it serves as a place for our family to watch TV, play games, have dance parties & meaninful conversation.

When we first moved into our home, we knew knocking down a hallway to open the foyer to the living room would be mandatory in creating an inviting space.

We kept the stone fireplace, but updated the mantle. We gave the walls a fresh coat of white paint and replaced the beams on the ceiling.

We removed the wall from the foyer/hallway to the living room.

We gave a fresh coat of paint, replaced the fireplace mantle & re-finished the floors.

We replaced the beams with shallower wood beams to give more height to the ceilings.

Below are few pictures of our living room in BH&G a few years ago right after the renovation. You can see the full feature HERE.

Furniture Layout + Sources |

Just as we evolve and styles change over the years, the home can feel that itching too. You don’t have to take away from its bones, but you can bring some life to something with fresh eyes. Even since we renovated our home 5 years ago, our home has evolved… especially our living room! Still staying true to its tutor style, we have brought a light + bright aesthetic with clean + timeless design.

One of the first things that started this “refresh” was updating our fireplace from stone to stucco.
Stay tuned for more on that NEXT week!

As we said, our living room has a lot of different functions! In order to meet all our needs we ended up doing two sofas on either side of the fireplace with a coffee table in the middle (that can easily be moved for dance parties!) in between. Our sofas are floating in the middle of the room, anchored by a rug.

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We did two sofas so that we can lounge while we watch TV. Our TV (not pictured) is in the left corner left. We chose not to do a TV on the fireplace as we felt it would swallow up our fireplace & look disproportionate with our 8ft ceilings.

Each sofa has a sofa table behind it. Due to the cosy (read small) nature of our living room, we aren’t able to fit side tables as it would leave no room for walkways. Sofa tables are a a great way to be able to still include lamps for lighting and have a place to set your drink!

After we updated our fireplace, we also make a few changes to our decor. While we did not make any major changes like new sofas, we did update with new pillows, rug and accessories to go along with our new brighter + lighter aesthetic!

Don’t miss Anisa’s tour of the space!

RH Shelter Arm Sofa in Belgian Linen Flax- We love slipcovered furniture! We love the look and it is great for cleaning. We love all (yes all 6 of us) snuggling up to watch a movie in this sofa.

Pottery Barn Carlisle Sofa - Your sofas don’t have to match! We loved pairing these two together.

Coffee Table - This one is no longer in stock so we linked a similar one here!

White Chair or White Chair - We got this ours from West Elm, but it is also no longer in stock. Here is a similar one.

Rug - This rug is to the trade and from the French Market Collection at the Mart. See a similar here from RH.

Console - We had this console custom, but here is one we like!

Bookshelf - Here is a white bookshelf from West Elm!

Lamp - Ours is from West Elm, but they no longer carry it. Check out a similar one!

Mirror - We love how this mirrors adds texture with the rope!

Blanket - We love these cable knit throws from Target!

TV Remote Box - We love to use this box for all our remotes so we can keep track of the!

White Frame - The white frame on the bookshelf is from Ikea!

Baskets - Great for toy storage!