we will do a lot in our living room (livicus roomicus). the house will allow for all of our just-come-over-for-the-evening entertaining spaces to remain on the first floor, so only we and longer-term guests will come up beyond that level. this will let us have a really nice sense of privacy upstairs--a true family room, with television, dogs, knitting, work, and whatever we really do all day left out without worry. i'm really excited about the potential this area has.
because of the conversion of this area--which is currently the tenants' main living area, including their kitchen, bathroom, laundry, study, dining room, and living room--there are lots of spaces and plumbing already in place. i'd previously been fretting about what to do about that kitchen, but in talking to my friend lotta yesterday, who'll be embarking on a similar mission with her husband-to-be in the not-too-distant future, i realized that we could leave a lot of that kitchen intact as a wet bar for snacking and casual entertaining. what a bonus!
that said, we do a lot in these areas:
- we watch a lot of television. a lot.
- i work, on my laptop while sitting on a sofa. a lot. sometimes it's stuff i do while watching tv.
- sometimes i knit or read while watching tv.
- in our current family room, which is adjacent to our kitchen, we eat. i doubt that'll happen any more, as the new family room will be on a different floor from the kitchen. but we may snack.
- guests will sleep, and i'm sure we'll nap.
- the dogs' crates may be in one of these rooms (there are two rooms, big open floor plan, that will combine to be the family room and my study, sort of). they'll eat in here, too, if that's the case.
so we'll want the rooms to be really comfortable and cozy, but not so cozy as to induce sleep while i'm working :) and they need to be well lit when we need light, but dimmed when we want to watch a romantic movie. i want the rooms to feel intimate but not cluttered, messy, or crowded.
my design priorities for these rooms are functionality and clean modernality, as usual. they have southern and eastern exposures, so light won't be a problem most of the day--indirectly through the kitchen that adjoins them (and will essentially become part of them), they even get western exposure. i don't actually ever remember going up there and not seeing it bathed in light (though we never go up at night).
i have found, with great gratitude and joy, a sectional sofa that beautifully evokes a midcentury modern aesthetic, with petite tapered wood legs, a low profile, just the right height of armrests, and just the right lines. the cushiones could be less rounded, but it's slipcovered, and with two big black furry dogs, that makes up for a lot. it's room and board's jasper ($$$$).
we love a sectional, because it allows all of us to lounge at the same time. make no mistake--all of us lounge at the same time. it's just that the dogs have a very different idea of personal space than we do. although it's shown in white, i wouldn't buy a white sofa even slipcovered. not for my family room, where the dogs lounge regularly. no way. i think the color palette on the second floor will be warmer than on the first. i could see this in a mossy green or deep crimson (though i've owned a deep red sofa before and might just be over that). if in green, our color palette for the room would probably look something like this
--continuing the same maple floor 
we had throughout the first floor, with the cream color on the walls and the blue and taupe as accents in furnishings and such. i think those achieve the fairly modern, soothing-but-not-sleep-inducing mood we'd be going for. in addition to the sofa, we have a couple of midcentury modern armchairs to add to the mix that are curbside finds and tossaways just waiting in the basement for reupholstering. we'll need a new coffee table; i do adore the nelson bench
, but i'll find a similar item on ebay or at a yard sale rather than pay the $600-700 it takes to buy one new. topped with a tray, great for snacks, but mostly, i just adore how it looks. something about the slats emphasizing the horizontal--the same thing i love about prairie architecture and stacked-stone walls--and the contrast between the blond maple top and black legs. and those clean lines. yum-o.
those walls have the textured plaster i so would love to have smooth, but again--not sure i'm interested in undoing that. we'll see how much remedial work is required. if a lot, worth undoing. if not, i'll let it be, most likely. and we'll need some slim trim boards; i don't think there is any up there right now.
i cannot WAIT to tear up every inch of carpeting up there. it reeks of cat pee and god knows what else. replace it all with beautiful maple hardwood. i drool to think of it.
there is a decorative fireplace up there. i'm not really sure how that'll fit in with the whole midcentury thing; i can't picture right now how ornately queen anne it is. that's a plan that will have to wait. i'm not tearing anything original out--i'm not a destructorenovator.
we do have lots and lots of shelving already, fortunately. that's at least one thing we won't have to purchase (which is good, because he's going to flip when he sees the price of that sectional i want). i'm not sure what to do about media storage. i love the $15 midcentury modern buffet we bought at an estate sale this spring, but i'd love to use it in the new dining room for serveware storage. but maybe when the kitchen has been redone, we'll just have room for all of that stuff in there, and there won't be any need for storage in the dining room. so for a while, at least, i suppose it will continue to serve its function.
the cool thing will be that i can get creative with window treatments, because there are few opportunities for privacy invasion from the second-floor windows, as i recall. woot woot! as for lighting, i have no idea until i get up there what kinds of fixtures there are or aren't. and our best decorating is always framing smartboy's prints.
