Our first big project of 2021 will be transforming our living room! We are excited to reveal the design of our new space soon, but until then, we wanted to talk about why this space just isn’t working for us. When I first moved back to Dallas, it was to an apartment and I knew it would be temporary. I am a long-term thinker and trust me, if there was a way I could buy one sofa that would fit in our apartment and be big enough for our house, I probably would have gotten it. But there wasn’t. We are fortunate in that I was able to keep the same bed from our apartment to our bedroom here.

That’s not to say we don’t love our current setup. We do, it’s sentimental to us and we have a lot of memories with it. But it doesn’t work for us and this is why we are redesigning our living room.

1. Not Enough Seating

We love this sofa bed and it’s amazing for getting us this far. We first had it in our apartment and it was perfect for the living room size. Now that we’re in our first home, we really want our living room to be more hosting friendly. We want our family and friends to be able to gather and this sofa really only seats about three people comfortably. We need more people to be able to kick back and relax on it! Our new sofa will be much bigger and we’ll also add an accent chair! We can picture watching Texas Football, Figure Skating and movie nights with our family and friends here!

Our existing setup will actually go to my parents’ house. While their home is bigger, their living room layout is quite different and this will work perfectly in their home!

2. Making the Living Room Bigger

Before you freak out and think we’re involving a hammer, we are not. Our living room dimensions are perfect for us and what we need. However, because of the size of the furniture, it makes the room look smaller. Scale is such an important aspect to design and making a space look good. By incorporating furniture that’s the right scale, a few extra pieces and other details, we’ll really make the living room appear even bigger.

As you can see above, our living spaces are open concept. The living room flows into the dining and kitchen areas respectively. Not only will a new and bigger sofa give us more seating it’ll also help create a bit of visual separation between the living room and dining room. We love how our home is open concept, but we do want to be able to have a bit of a distinction between rooms.

3. Timelessness

Johnny and I are both longterm thinkers. We want to be able to have furniture that will last decades and will transition well as our life changes. The fabric needs to hold up to spills and stains but still be beautiful. We want the shape and style to transcend time because if we are lucky enough to build another house and move, we absolutely want to take our new setup with us and build on it. We really want to invest in what we buy since we know it’ll pay for itself through the years.

We both also dream of having a white sofa. It’s an aesthetic thing, but that’s our dream and we cannot wait to show you the design next week!