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Hi there! I thought it would be fun to show a before & after of our living room. I show bits and pieces of it on instagram, but I dont think I’ve shown a wide view of it before. My husband (Matt) & I bought our home in October of 2017. As newlyweds (and with me working as a teacher at the time), we didn’t have a lot to spend on furniture right away. For the first few months we worked on only  buying necessities like cleaning stuff, shower curtains/rods, Christmas decor (obvi a necessity), etc. The home had just gone through the “flipping” process so it felt brand new & I was so relieved that we didn’t need to fix anything. 

Decorating our home really grew my love of design and styling/furnishing our home has turned into a passion that is now a huge part of my life. I love helping people feel like their home is a cozy & safe place.  When I’m decorating my own home I know I will always want to change things around to make it feel “new” or “different” and that may be the case for you too! It’s exciting for me & I can’t wait to see how our home evolves over the next few years 🙂 

Now for the before….ugh.

This is our home after my husband moved in.  He lived there until we got married and then I moved in. If this doesn’t scream “bachelor pad” or “yikes” I don’t know what does…

Fun fact: the denim sofa (or “jouch” as my friends called it) was my parents when they got married. When they moved us to the US from South Africa, they got it recovered & brought it along. That loveseat was the most comfortable thing I have ever laid my butt on. Sadly, its no longer with us.

    

This is our home now, 2.5 years later. All I knew as I was picking pieces was that it had to be functional, comfortable, and obviously not be mismatched furniture from our college days. My decor (much to the dismay of my husband) will keep changing as my taste varies & as I try to implement new things. 

  

The first piece of furniture that we got was our La-Z-Boy sofa and the rest of the room soon fell into place. Our living room is a rectangle shape so I was worried that our furniture wouldn’t fit well. The next piece we wanted was a TV console & Matt actually built ours! We slowly got one piece after the other until we filled up our space. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with decorating a space, whether it’s your living room, bedroom, etc., go slow!! There’s no rush & the worst thing you can do is to buy furniture just to immediately fill up the space. You don’t want to make big purchases only to regret buying them later. I would rather wait & buy something that I love, even if that means I have to save a little more. At the end of the day I want to be selective & have the piece make sense before I bring it into my home. 

I’ve created a “Shop the Room” below in case you’re interested in any shopping anything in my living room. If you’re still overwhelmed/stressed/don’t know where the heck to begin, I’m here to help you! From a layout/functional disaster to decorating or styling shelves, I’m the girl for you 🙂 There are affiliate links so I may make a small commission if you shop with my link.