Portland Bungalow: Living Area

Recently I showed you what our new place looks like. Since then, we've moved in and are loving our new place, especially the small yard!

Now that we finally have a home we can see ourselves staying in a for a couple years, we really want to make it our own (as much as you can in a rental). The bungalow is basically just one large square living space with a bay window across from the kitchen, bedroom/bathroom across from the front door and a window. The floor plan can be pretty flexible, but here's our planned layout:





Because it's so open, the kitchen/work/living spaces all need to speak to one another stylistically. The new place gets such great light, particularly with the white walls and large windows. We want to capitalize on the open, airy feeling, which means getting rid of or repurposing some of our heavier pieces from our last place and supplementing what we already own with a few new pieces. For example, my insanely talented fiancee is creating a coffee table and console table from local reclaimed lumbar and locally-created metal legs (I got a picture text at work today of the coffee table and it looks so good!).

Here are some inspiration images for the vibe we're after in the living area, along with our plan for how to accomplish it!

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As you can see, we're shooting for a mix of colorful, fun textiles, lots of white and wood, and an overall bright, breezy minimal boho vibe. 

Here's the game plan: 

We really only have one open wall in this place (everywhere else is windows, doors, or kitchen!), so we're planning to reuse the floating wood shelves from our apartment there. This wall is bigger than our last one, so we'll fill in the empty spaces around the floating shelves with invisible bookshelves.

The sofa is floating in the middle of the room facing the window, so we'll put the new console table to put behind it with some fun lamps. I like the ones pictured here because they're a fun shape and color but still glass, so they don't feel too heavy in the room. The new coffee table is sized just right for the space, and my housewarming present to myself will be this silly side table that makes me smile. 

Finally, we have a slipper chair and side table that go in the bay window, facing the sofa, and will fill in the space with lots of green plants. I'm most excited about the plants, because our last place was where beautiful plants went to slowly curl into themselves and not-quite-die from lack of sun!

What do you think?