Hello and welcome to the second installment of a series about how I’ve transformed my pretty basic rental apartment in Boston into a stylish and personal home for my husband and I.
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In case you missed it, last spring I shared the changes I made to my kitchen. The kitchen flows into the dining/living area, but not quite as an open concept. If the living/dining room are the long side of a capital L, the kitchen is the short side.
Today’s feature is about the living/dining room that has plagued me with many design and functionality headaches since we moved in September 2021. When thinking about the living/dining, I needed it to be complementary with the kitchen, though not matchy-matchy.
I love how the flow ended up; it’s always fun to catch a glimpse of the green kitchen cabinets in the living room mirror.
Challenges
Pitched ceiling
We occupy the top floor of the building under the roof, so the ceiling is high but not straight, and has a few awkward popouts for the HVAC and the fireplace.
Small square footage
Maybe 300 sq ft in total?
Long and narrow layout
Tough to arrange furniture and walkways
Limited storage and wanting it to look tidy
I cannot deal with a room that looks messy and cluttered, especially when it’s the largest, most central room in my house. This room has a lot of open shelving (as well as a large coffee table surface) and it’s an ongoing challenge to keep it looking neat.
The living/dining space before
I lifted some of these photos off the real estate listing, so apologies for the terrible quality.
The old paint color on the wall has some yellow to it, which wasn’t working for me—especially since it was pretty scuffed up and didn’t feel fresh.
But the main layout wasn’t terribly hard to figure out; I pretty much settled on putting the sofa and coffee table opposite the fireplace and the dining table in front of the windows and baker’s rack in the southeast corner right away—and haven’t tinkered with it since.
I’ve played around a lot with the northeast corner, though. At different points, there was a faux tree, the chest of drawers switched walls, there was a larger chair than there is now, the bookcase appeared and went away and came back, and the Christmas tree occupied the space in December. For now, I’ve settled on a chest of drawers, a bookcase, and a petite chair and ottoman nestled in-between.
The living/dining space after
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