While John is Gone...

John is out of town this week for business. If you know me at all, you know I can't let things sit for too long in my house. Things have to be shaken up every once and a while. I need variety, I crave change. This is the perfect chance!

My focus while John is out of town is our living room. It's been bothering me since we moved in.
Because our house is a cape cod, the living room is dark. The front porch doesn't allow for a lot of light to flow into the living room, so I've had to get creative to get some more light in there to make it feel more open.
When we first saw it:

Our first focus was painting the room a neutral color and painting the trim white. While it does make for a neutral color palate for anything to go in there, it didn't really brighten the room much.

Then, once we got our furniture in the room we realized it wasn't nearly as big as we thought. We had a HUGE living room in our apartment, not so much with the new house. Our huge media cabinet literally took over the space. It had to go. It was a salvage piece I found at Goodwill several years ago and re-painted. Because I only paid $50 for it, I was ok to see it go.

Recently, we got rid of our carpet and replaced it with new floors (which you can read all about here and here and here) This really helped. Seriously. New floors can make all the difference in how a room feels. I'm liking it, but it's still not the room I'm looking for.

Now that it's summer, I'm looking for cool colors, breatheable textures, light fabrics and lots of light. So that's my starting point.

Now, while John is gone, let's see if he reads the blog to see what his little wife is up to while he's away ;)
Stay tuned, I'll be posting my progress as I work through this week.

I'd love your feedback and any ideas you may have. I can't wait to see my new space!