Living Room Re-Design Unveil Part 2

We are nothing if not talented procrastinators.  Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?  Or the next day?  Such is the reason why weeks passed between our finishing the first half of our living room and our even attempting the second half.

But the half-unpacked boxes serving as furniture in our seating area got to be sufficiently embarrassing that we eventually gave ourselves a mutual kick in the asses and got to work.

Ta da!

After over a year in this house, we finally have matching bookshelves that aren't made out of cardboard. Woo hoo!  We ended up getting custom-built, freestanding bookcases because we were too cheap to have real built-ins installed.  The shelves are already almost completely full -- of just my husband's books (mine are in my office) -- so there isn't much styling to be done there, but now he actually knows what books he owns because he can see them.

After much deliberation about the furniture for the seating area and even more consternation about the lighting, we finally settled on the Sanna chairs from Room and Board, the brass barrel-shaped Cascara side table from Anthro, and the Sweater Rug from West Elm.  (The latter, by the way, sheds like a sweaty dog, so be advised.)

Eventually, we'd love some huge art piece to hang on the wall behind the chairs and to balance out the crazy floor lamp, but until we win the lottery, I decided we'd make do with a large canvas print of one of the tea cups from our Chinese Tea Ceremony (among my favorite moments of a very happy wedding day). 

Finally, this means we're finished dealing with our living room.  Now we move on to the dark hole we call our entryway . . . .