simply crafted mid century modern home tour

I love our house, but things were starting to get a bit...stale.

It's sort of difficult to admit this publicly, since I'm an Interior Designer and all, but even the pros can get numb to change in their own spaces. I just got used to seeing all of our furniture in the same spots for the last year and a half and had become kind of, well, stuck. I had ideas for how to change things up, but I needed a little extra creativity (and moral support).

Enter Sidney and Marci, two of the most stylish gals I know. Both are Interior Designers. You might remember Sidney from her downtown loft tour that I shared earlier this fall.

The ladies, hard at work.

In exchange for wine and french onion soup, these lovely gals came over and helped me give our downstairs a much needed refresh.

Before: The formal living room was feeling a bit too formal. The furniture arrangement was hyper-symmetrical, which isn't a bad thing, but it got old...fast.

After: WOW. Look at how much more open it is! Also, I think it looks like something out of the Design Within Reach catalog, which is a good thing (at least for me). This arrangement really enhances some of the house's Mid-Century bones.

Moving the blue sofa to the side wall, rather than facing the fire place, really opened the space up. It's not the traditional choice. Why do we feel such a strong need to face the sofa towards the fireplace anyway?

The space feels so much larger. Before when people would walk into our house (which is where I'm standing taking this photo) there was always this confusion on where to go. Straight into the formal area? That seemed too closed off. The back of the blue sofa was like a big o'l stop sign. So people would scoot through the adjacent narrow hallway, past the bathroom (lovely) and into the kitchen. Not a great entry experience.

Before: Bookcases on the side wall. Our friend the deer head had not quite made his way onto the wall. Also, this photo is terrible. The lighting in this room is the WORST.

After: The sofa is along that wall now with the credenza behind it. This gives the sofa some breathing room and gives us a place to add lighting - a much needed element in this super dark space. Thanks, once again, to the builder who skimped out on any overhead lighting.

I still need to add curtains to those windows, and now my deer friend (see what I did there?) is a bit too high without those tall bookcases there. These walls are wood paneled, so I try to avoid putting too many holes in them. I'll get around to lowering it (probably).

Instead of a traditional coffee table, we layered two side tables. The shape, color, and texture contrast makes it interesting. The stool provides extra seating as well.

The bookcases moved into the corner by the fireplace. I would never thought of smooshing them all together into the corner like that on my own. This is the most inviting little reading chair now. There is a speaker buried back in the bookcase so I can sit, relax, and listen to ~~Taylor Swift~~ jazz.

The sheepskin rug was stolen from Max's nursery (shhh, don't tell him). In a perfect world there would be a cowhide rug here. Maybe one day when I don't have small children and a large dog to destroy it.

Before: This credenza is holding extra serving pieces for entertaining. Art never got around to being hung. Ugly leftover pillow on brown chair. Coffee table books in perpetual disarray from two small children.

After: This mid-century secretary desk that I found on Craig's list a few months back fits just perfectly. It wasn't in the before pictures because it's relatively new, but it resided in the now bookcase corner. Let's talk about that growth chart back there. Found that puppy at Canton in October. Fun fact - Canton is the largest, continually operated outdoor flea market in the USA, and it's just about an hour from my house. True story.

And again, I need curtains.

My dad drew this. He's an amazing artist. And he designs helicopters. Right brain + left brain. See where I get this stuff? It's in my BLOOD.

Before: Our family room was nice and cozy, but it had some issues. None of which are immediately visible in this gorgeous photo by my friend Emily of Emily Mulkey Photography.

First, that orange rug was really competing with the wood wall. And the orange chair put it over the top. Too much orange. Did I just say too much orange? WOW. You can really tell in my awful picture below. I didn't have my good camera yet, so this was taken with my iPhone. Back off.

The other problem is that this sectional, which we love, was not made to be free floating. The pieces kept drifting apart. This is thanks mostly to the terrible movers who ripped out the connecting piece when we moved houses because they "couldn't figure out how to get it apart." Gee, thanks. And also in part to the need for people to plop down right in the crack of it like they caught the vapors.

After: BIG change, right? I didn't think it would ever work to put the sofa on that wall from a TV viewing perspective, but it does. The deep indigo blue rug was pulled from the playroom and works so much better in here.

We didn't do it when we moved in because we thought it would be too dark, which it would have in the old furniture arrangement. Again, no overhead lighting. But moving the sofa to the side wall opened things up visually and allows more light into the space from the adjacent kitchen and playroom.

On the opposite wall (no before photo, sorry) we moved the white club chair into the formal living and replaced it with this credenza. The blanket ladder was a recent find from my trip to Canton in early October. And the stool is an old piano stool that I swiped from my parent's house that was hanging out in a corner of our guest room.

Before: I actually liked this little setup in the playroom, but the chairs were called up to the big leagues in the formal living room. They are very light weight, so tended to get shoved around in the playroom. They were never arranged nicely.

After: This orange fella made the move from the family room into here, along with that laptop table/stool. To fill up the space, we shifted the play table and chairs. This is a good thing, since Max's new favorite game is to stand on the chairs and drop his booty like Beyonce.

See how cool that stool/table is? It can flip down to be a seat and flip sideways to hold your laptop and coffee.

Whadda ya think? Pretty nice, if I do say so myself. A much needed breath of fresh air before the holidays.

The bar on the first floor is the next space to get a makeover. I've got an exciting collaboration with a local company that I can't wait to show you. But more on that later.

If you have any questions on where to buy any of the furniture or accessories, you can check out this post of our house tour or drop a comment below and I'll do my best to help you out.

And, if you'd like to see more house tours of my amazing designer friends, drop that comment too and I'll start hounding them. ;)

Thanks to Sidney and Marci for donating your Sunday evening to my house!

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