Pulling a Switcheroo~ Our Dining & Living Room Before and Afters

I find more and more people now a days are thinking outside the box when it comes to utilizing space in their homes. When it comes to formal living rooms, what purpose does that room really serve? Collects dust, maybe holds a Christmas tree once a year, and typically looks a little stuffy. Most of the time, it's never used in most households out there. If you and your family do use your formal living room, I congratulate you!

When we moved into our home, I had no idea what to do with our living room. It went from being the previous owners main living room that looked like this....

{Previous owners main living room}

To pretty much an empty room that had an identity crisis....

{Slowly adding furnishings}

{Huge focal wall I had no idea what to do with}

{Added the art, but after several months moved it elsewhere that made more sense}

After a year, it was still pretty much empty and had no purpose. It's a fairly large size room with a beautiful window that let's in tons of natural light and I hated to see this waste of space. It wasn't in our budget to run out and buy additional furniture to fill up the space. Ya'll know that I hate to buy pieces just to buy.

After living with it for awhile, a lightbulb went off one day.  I thought to myself..."Why not switch my  living room and dining room around." At first, I thought am I crazy??? 

Here are some  pictures of my dining room before..again the first couple pictures are the previous owners layout. You'll notice we painted the walls a neutral. The orange and blue was a little too much for the eyes. We also removed the marble serving table that was attached to the wall. We moved that outside by our patio table and now makes a great serving table.

{Previous owner's layout}

 How its looked for the last year..

{Our dining room set up after we moved in}

The dining room always felt a little tight. The only reason we used it as a dining room is because the previous owner had hers set up that way and that's where the chandelier was.

As soon as I thought about making the switch, I started moving some furniture around and after I was finished, I absolutely loved how the rooms suddenly felt right !! It was a miraculous transformation that now made total sense.

It's a bigger space and our table centers perfectly with the main window. We added a rug and had the electrician move the dining room chandelier to the "new" dining room. The only thing still missing is my grandmother's grandfather clock, a couple chairs for the head of the table and a picture or two for the wall.



What do ya'll think of now?

I'm loving the new space!! Our buffet we bought from the Salvation Army matches perfectly with our table and chairs and the buffet lamps frame the mirror nicely. No more undesirable wall. I've been eyeing a couple chairs for the head of the table from Restoration Hardware. I think a nice slipcover chair will break up the wood a bit and add some softness.


What do ya'll think? Good choice??

So now your wondering what the "new" living room looks like...


This is now a great space for visiting and acts as an extension of our kitchen. We moved the chandelier that was in our master bedroom into the new living room and replaced it with a ceiling fan. The furniture I had worked great with the chairs. I bought two metal pieces hanging on the wall from Home Goods for $40.00 each. Here was another wall that needed interest and these worked out perfect, plus they didn't cost a fortune. I did buy a wall stencil from Royal Design Studio, but thought it would be too busy. I hung our wedding picture I had in the entry up and called it a day. The coffee table I bought from Salvation Army and ended up painting it black.

It's a wrap and we love how the new space feels. I always think that when you move into a new place,  it's always better to live with the home for awhile and figure out what works and what doesn't work.

We moved into our home in August 2011 and it's finally come together. It was such a fun creative process switching the rooms around and breaking out of the box.

I would love to hear if you also pulled a little switcheroo and changed things up in your home?? Does your dining room act as a home office now or your living room act as the dining room?? Do tell!!

I'd love to hear from you!!