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Around the House: Reading Room Update

I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to start posting progress updates on the rooms in our house, so consider this the second installment of that- our reading room.

Maybe I should mention briefly that we’re not as hoity-toity as the name “reading room” might imply. We just have this odd little space in the front room of our house that we didn’t know quite what to do with. I’ve always wanted a library of my own and we have approximately 1million books that needed a home, so we decided to make this our quiet space with no tv and we call it our reading room. I love how peaceful it is in here. I can see all the way up our street and I picture myself watching our kids play in the circle from the huge open windows in a few years.

Anyway, on to the room! When we moved in, it looked like this:

So dark and uninviting, not to mention the overwhelming smell of cat in every corner. We covered the red, tore down the heavy drapes, cleaned the carpet (for now), and added my library. A few months ago it looked like this:

That is both for comparison before the chairs, and my sneaky way of getting Brett back for jumping in front of my camera as I was taking this picture. :) Hahaha… anyway, I had been waiting and searching for the perfect siting chairs for this space score months when we were lucky enough to get these beautiful antiques a few weeks ago and they are perfect both in color and scale. So here is the reading room today:

And a comparison shot too:

As you can probably tell, this one is far from finished. Even looking at these pictures, I see things that I want to change. Isn’t it funny how sometimes photos show you things you miss in real life? Like how everything in here is in pairs of two. I think a third bookshelf might remedy that nicely. Here is my current list of things still to do:

• finish baseboards
• finish building/painting my bench
• find area rug to better define seating space
• find small table for between chairs
• third bookshelf
• patch ceiling holes from old drapes
• stencil on back long wall
• floor pillows for more comfort and kid friendly space
• possible new lighting solution
• new carpet

This house is an ever-evolving project, so my lists change constantly, but that’s it for right now. We also have some family photos planned for the not so distant future, so I’m hoping to have some of those replace the round mirror over the table radio once we get them back. As you can see there is still a ways to go, but we’re getting there.

Do you have any weird rooms in your house with no clear purpose? What did you (or do you plan to) do with them?

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