The evolution of our living room (and some new Castlery furniture)

THE FARMHOUSE

The Farmhouse living room is a nice, large space just around the corner from our entry. It has beautiful original windows on two adjacent sides and connects to the entry and dining room with large pocket doors. All these doorways and windows add loads of architectural interest and charm, but they’ve made layout and furniture a bit challenging. But we’ve finally found some seating and layout solutions that are really working for us.

*this post is sponsored by Castlery

Castlery’s Wayne armchair and ottoman in opal beige

Let’s start at the beginning. When we bought the Farmhouse back in 2016, the living room looked like this…

As we pulled up carpets, swapped out lighting, painted, and slowly furnished this space it never had enough seating. Our living room doubles as our TV-watching spot and the kids’ play area, and it’s where we do our indoor hanging out.

To keep the house flowing well (and give the kids space to run circles around the main floor on cloudy days ;), we’ve tried to keep a wide passway around the living room doorways clear. Another goal we’ve had in here, is to keep open site lines to let the architecture shine and help the room stay connected to the adjacent spaces.

Given these constraints, let’s dive into the furniture pieces, arrangement and what hasn’t worked and how we incorporated a few new pieces from Castlery to finally get our living room working better. A little bit about Castlery…they are a modern furniture company that creates a story for every room in your home. They craft timeless furniture, using high quality raw materials to create pieces that are built for longevity and multi-purpose use. As a direct-to-consumer brand without middlemen, they are able to extend honest pricing and affordability to their customers.

Back to the first couch we bought for this room…

You might remember that after we moved in 6 years ago, we tried a large blue velvet sofa that just didn’t seem to fit the style of the room. We lived with it for a few years before finally giving it to my sister. Enter the Rose sofa.

We bought Rose for our previous house and it stayed there for a couple of years until we finally brought it to the Farmhouse. With it’s rolled arms and elegant legs, it feels much more at home here and is also a little smaller, giving us room for side tables. A large round wood vintage table anchors the far corner and serves as an occasional lego factory site : ).

Since we wanted ample (but flexible) seating we brought in a couple large IKEA slip covered chairs and placed them on opposite sides of the living room, one near the round table and the other in front of the large front facing window. A large amoire originally from 1800’s France sits next to the doorway to the entry and serves as toy storage. A good sized coffee table in the middle also provides additional book and game storage. The TV was wall mounted in the corner of the room between the two pocket doors and had an old cast-off desk below that provided a landing spot for electronics, random action figures and a Sonos speaker. This spot was a particular mess! but before we get to that, lets talk about what wasn’t working with this setup.

Despite a relatively large living room, we could only comfortably seat six people and if I’m going to be honest, the Rose while elegant, isn’t the best spot to snuggle in for a movie. The IKEA chairs were awkwardly sized for this space—too small for two but too large to pair with an ottoman. And the TV corner was pretty unsightly. Cords dangling, a random old desk inevitably strewn with random stuff in what appeared to be a random placement under the TV.

So here’s what we did to fix all that…

We swapped out the messy desk and cord situation for the Harper Sideboard. We placed it at an angle to make TV watching easy from all 3 sides of the living room, and brought the TV down to a more comfortable viewing height.

It’s a beautiful piece and the rounded corners help the piece tuck into the corner vs. something with right angles.

Next, we addressed the lack of seating by swapping out our IKEA chairs for a matching sofa and chair with easy-to-move-around ottomans from Castlery. The Wayne sofa, armchair, and ottomans are low profile and sturdy but don’t get in the way of the view or feel too heavy. Plus they’re super comfortable. We can now seat 10 people in here!

We love the flexibility of this Wayne set. If it’s just Garrett and I snuggling up for a show we’ll grab both ottomans for the sofa to create a double lounger : ). These pieces would work well in lots of different spaces and we considered them for the Poplar Cottage living room as well. As someone who’s moved too many times to count, I really value furniture that’s this versatile.

BTW, here’s the Poplar living room moodboard I worked up with the Castlery furniture.