Help! Seeking suggestions for my living room!

I am going back and forth on what curtains I want to hang in the living room, and what color to upholster my new Goodwill chair in. I thought I would run it by you all.

** Note: all the pictures below have massive amounts of clutter in them. This is because Bowie's room won't be done for another month or two, so, basically, my living room is his toy box. We also have his crib and nursery furniture in here as well. When he moves into his room, I will get my nice, neat living room back! **

My living room is painted Ralph Lauren “Hazel Woods.” A nice khaki-ish green. I think it is the perfect sagey green. The woodwork is original to the house and will always remain unpainted, as is traditional Queen Anne trim.


I wanted to do sage green and gray, with a few punches of powder blue. I upholstered a pair of Goodwill chairs in Amy Butler fabric, which JOY!!!, was blue/gray with punches of sage green. The chair to the right I painted and recovered. Chair to the left has only had the arms painted. The little Queen Anne table in the middle is staying. I painted it light gray, but am open to suggestions. I love the jelly fish lamp, so that stays. I like a little something funky to add punch! Anyway, these chairs and table will be centered in front of the "window wall." This wall is pretty much floor to ceiling windows, with lovely wood trim work. (These are the windows I need curtains for!!!)



Our newly-scored Craiglist Queen Anne sofa is black and cream brocade. Check out my upcoming post about de-stinking that sofa! Yuck!!!! It is actually more black than cream, the flash just really picked up the cream in it for some reason. It needs some throw pillows and the matching throws on it can go to another chair. Maybe powder blue pillows?? Not a lot of furniture is going on this wall. Maybe a square wicker trunk to go between the sofa and the other chair I will mention in a bit here. I am trying to figure out what I want to paint to hang over the sofa. I have a few ideas, nothing solid yet.




I got a black and white rug from CB2. We love it. Except for the fact that they didn't tell me it was professional clean only AFTER I bought it. How the hell do you keep a white rug clean if you can't steamclean it yourself? I vacuum daily and give my kids the evil eye whenever they bring snacks in. The trunk in front of the sofa is from a flea market type thing called Good JuJu in the West Bottoms of downtown Kansas City. It is my favoritest place ever and I am always getting fabulous antiques on the cheap there.



I picked up a vintage stereo cabinet that we will be putting new components in, painting charcoal and using for a TV stand. You can sort of see it there behind all the baby's toys. (Come on baby room!!)



Here is the entertainment center that I am replacing with said project. It will be nice to have the turntable put away. Bowie likes to play DJ and that is not so great on my records and needles. Turn your head sideways - I forgot to rotate the picture. Our artwork on this wall will be some cool framed album covers (musicians are weird, I know) and some beautiful prints of gig posters.


We just bought an old chair from the thrift store (I'm not cheap – I'm frugal, OK!) and was thinking of having it recovered in pale blue and doing throw pillows in the same fabric as the other chairs. This is the chair that I said I wanted a square trunk between it and the sofa. This chair will be floating in the middle of the room, anchored to everything with the rug. Someday I need to have some furniture facing my firplace... but that is a whole other post.

Our big room will eventually have a cool set of record shelves and library ladder by the fireplace (where we tore out a terrible paneled wall) with maybe a seating area there. Here is my wonderful Steven proping up the beams until we get the fireplace project finished. Someone really did a number on that poor thing. Eventually, we will want to box it in and have a nice mantel. Oh, and I want to replace the fireplace with a wood burning insert.

I also fixed up a used tub chair and made a table out of an old sewing table (you know, the ones that had a sewing machine mounted in them that you'd flip up). This goes to the right of the pocket door (the stereo is on the left of the pocket door). I know it seems like a lot of furniture, but our room is really huge... so really, it is not cluttered at all. I made the black and white pillow from Joel Dewberry fabric. The vintage sage green pillow was $3.50 at Good JuJu.

Here is where you come in... I started making curtains out of heavy gray corduroy fabric. But then, I started to worry that with all the dark woodwork in the room, which is not overly bright anyway, a whole wall of heavy corduroy would make it dreary. I found some curtains of Bed Bath and Beyond called “peacock” that I thought about buying. But I am just not sure if gray curtains in general would be dreary. But white or cream could be out of place considering I don't use that anywhere else in the room. I do like a nice cozy, breezy feeling (which is why I only used sheers in the bedroom). Here is the corduroy - it is more gray than this. The flash made it look brownish. And the cords on this are huge. It is an oversized look.

After all that babbling... I need curtains and any other thoughts you have that would pull my room together.

Loves! Puck

UPDATE: Decorno asked for a photo of the window wall. Note the giant pile o' stuff in the left corner. That is my sewing table (which will eventually move into the studio. For now, it is piled high with upholstery stuff. I need to get crackin'!