HI hope you all had a wonderful weekend! After several very busy weeks, I finally carved out a couple of days to do fun things. My sister and nephew came up for the weekend and we enjoyed shopping, eating, and drinking coffee together. On Saturday my girls, my sister and I spent a delightful afternoon making candles — so much fun. Candle making is likely a new obsession.
We also visited a few open houses in the Seattle area just for fun. Even though we aren’t house hunting (we just moved here), I can’t resist peeking inside homes. It’s always tempting to fall in love with a beautifully remodeled and professionally staged place, especially when your own house is still in an awkward, unstyled phase. Still, visiting other homes reminds me we made the right choice for our family. We have a lot of projects ahead to make our house feel like ours, but we love it and know it will be everything we need.
Last week we did some rearranging in the living and dining rooms. I was ready for a change — more accurately, I wanted to feel settled. I had been delaying rearranging because I wanted to paint and address the fireplace first, but I’m trying not to wait for perfect conditions.
I felt the living and dining areas weren’t as cozy as I wanted, so moving furniture felt like a low-risk way to try something new. I’m still considering painting or regrouting the fireplace as an affordable first-step makeover, but I knew an improved furniture layout could make a big difference now, so there was no need to wait.
Above: Our living room at Christmas, before we moved the glass cabinet to the dining room.
We started by moving the glass-front cabinet into the dining room. It always made sense there, but for some reason we had decided it would be too big. We also thought we needed it in the living room to hold lamps because that room lacks overhead lighting. We simply tried moving it and were thrilled to find it fit perfectly in the dining room. I’ll share the dining room arrangement in a future post.
Freeing up that wall allowed us to experiment with a new layout. With the cabinet gone, our remaining pieces felt sparse. The leather sofa seemed a bit small as the main seating, so we pulled in a few chairs to simulate how the space might feel with a larger sofa. One of the hazards of rearranging is discovering you don’t actually have all the pieces you need — but it’s also helpful for visualizing future purchases.
Our goal was a room that feels cozy and comfortable, yet open and inviting. We wanted to highlight the view while creating a conversational seating area. That dual purpose can be tricky. Initially we positioned the leather sofa facing the fireplace and placed the cabinet on the only full wall, but the room felt closed off and less welcoming.
To test another option, we simulated a larger sofa by arranging chairs facing the view and moved the leather sofa back toward the fireplace. The new setup felt balanced: cozy and open, with the view as a focal point and seating oriented for conversation. The arrangement felt right. Adding a chair angled toward the fireplace will complete the conversation zone.
We’ve lived with the new layout for a few days and so far we love it. We still need lamps, side tables, and a new sofa, but now we can clearly visualize what we want. We’ve already found a couple of potential sofa options and are excited to continue making the living room a comfortable, welcoming space.
Have you done any furniture arranging lately?
PS. We paused the Love Your Home Challenge over Easter weekend, and we’ll post the remaining challenges this week. Feel free to keep following along with the challenges on Instagram!
Living Room Sources:
Leather Nailhead Sofa
Blue and White Rug
Gray Coffee Table
Related Posts:
Updates to our basement family room
Our house floor plan