I Moved Our Whole House Around Last Week and It Was Just The Change We Needed

While PJ was working on the cottage one day last week, I was home um…moving a few things around….

Here’s the back story: when we started renovating our house, we had a decent-sized back yard with space to add on, so we decided to add a room off the kitchen to use as a living room. It would be separated by an archway that would allow it to feel like two separate rooms, but still be open enough so that you could cook in the kitchen and still entertain in the living room. We had two small-ish living rooms in the front of the house that didn’t provide enough space for how we envisioned living here, so adding a new, bigger living room in the back of the house was our solution.

But then we found the table. THE table. The dining room table of our dreams. It was a 12 ft long, sturdy, wooden table from the early 1900’s that had been painted in black chalk paint that we got for an amazing deal at our favorite local antique store. Suddenly everything changed, and what was once going to be a problem-solving living room with four big windows and French doors leading to our back porch, instantly had to become our new dining room because the table was too long for the original dining room. And in fact, it was too long for our room addition, too. We had our amazing carpenter cut three feet off of our new table to make it nine feet, which fit perfectly in our new dining room. And that was that.

But the thing is, we already had a dining room off the kitchen. The original dining room that my family and I used to eat all our meals in for the 18 years I lived in this house before PJ and I bought it back- what would we use that room as now? We tossed around a few ideas: build a bunch of bookcases and make it a library, make it another living room, or even a breakfast nook with a smaller table. It ended up as a hodgepodge of all of those ideas and we called it the “center hall” since it’s more or less in the center of the house, and the one room that you have to pass through to get to every room in our home. There was a table in the center (a beautiful old table we used as our dining table in our last house) usually stacked with books and sometimes we would do chairs around it. We ate in there every now and then, but mostly ate at the 9 ft table in the dining room addition. In short, it ended up being a borderline pointless room that we only used to pass through to get to where we were really going.

Eventually, we got tired of having to walk around the “breakfast nook” table, the kitchen island, AND the dining room table. It felt like there was too much furniture in the way of us getting to where we needed to go in our long, narrow house. So we decided to make some changes and store the breakfast nook table in the basement and make that room a den, filling it with four green velvet chairs from Interior Define that we absolutely adored. Seriously. I don’t think we’ve ever owned furniture that we loved this much before. They were a much needed pop of color in our beige and white colored home, and we loved how they made us use the room in a new way.

We lived with this setup for almost a year and half, and didn’t really have any complaints. To make this all makes sense, we had the living room (with the fireplace), the TV room, and the den. Three small-ish rooms that are all connected to each other that served different purposes but were somewhat closely related. We always said we would prefer just one big living room over three smaller rooms. A plus of this setup was the kiddos could be in the TV room watching one of their shows (in the front of the house) and we could be in the kitchen cooking without getting distracted. It worked for our family.

But as time went on, and we settled into a routine with the kids, we realized we only used half of our 9 ft dining table, and the other half became unintentionally reserved for stacks of paper, boxes, laundry, and literally anything else that we didn’t know what to do with. It felt like wasted space when we had three other rooms that we also didn’t technically need. But we loved our long dining room table and didn’t want to lose it! It was a dilemma that became amplified once we started social distancing and spending so much time at home over the last 7 months. So, I decided to make a change to switch things up, partly just for fun (after 7 months of the same thing every day, we all need something different, that’s within our control, to look forward to, right?) and partly because I wanted to see if this could work better for our family.

So while PJ was gone working on the cottage and the kiddos were taking their daily naps, I got to work. I moved one of the couches from our TV room and two of the green velvet chairs from the den into the dining room, and moved our 9 ft dining room table into the TV room, making it an office and a classroom of sorts for us to do virtual kindergarten with our oldest kiddo. Then we brought up our old, smaller dining table and put it in the original dining room and it fits so well in there. PJ also added our two small, leather club chairs to the office, allowing for more seating and adding the beautiful contrast of the white couch, black table, and brown leather chairs together for a cozy, comfortable room. Black, white, and brown = our favorite color scheme.

It took about an hour to do it all, so not too bad for a completely new feel and look. We also found this great TV console table at Southeastern Salvage that we fell in love with and knew would fit our new TV room perfectly, so in a moment of complete spontaneity, we bought it right then and brought it home. I love the patina and character of it. PJ found it and I’m so glad he did. He has such a good eye for finding pretty and useable pieces.

We’ve been living with the new setup for a week now and we all really love it. Design-wise it’s not really where we’d like it to be, but it’ll get there. We’ve decided to live with this arrangement for a while to make sure we love it, and if we don’t, and if for some reason it doesn’t work for us, we will just move it all back and go back to the way it was. It’s been fun to be in the kitchen cooking and interact with the kiddos in the living room while they play and watch TV. Just by switching things up, it feels like we’ve all been spending more time together lately. Before, the kitchen was closed off and felt so far away from the living room and the kiddos, which, to be honest, did have its pros (they could be as loud as they wanted and we could still get things done in the kitchen), but for some reason this setup feels right to us during this time in our lives.

It’s funny, PJ and I both used to move furniture around our families’ home when we were younger (much to the dismay of them), so it’s kind of a dream come true to have our own house to move things around as we please. We haven’t lived in a house yet that we don’t re-arrange things in every few months. It’s just who we are. It’s one of the ways we stretch our creativity and keep things fresh, fun, and interesting at home. And the kiddos LOVED walking into the room and seeing it all different. They jumped and screamed and started playing on all the furniture. It was so, so cute.

I realize this is such a trivial and almost pointless topic to write about with so much tragedy going on in the world right now. We watch the news every day, I get Apple News updates sent to my phone, and I’ve been living on Twitter lately (where I pretty much only follow news & political accounts). I am very aware that our world is basically a mess right now, and it has affected our family greatly over the last few months (both of our moms lost their jobs, and PJ’s anxiety and depression has deeply worsened). But I think that’s exactly why I felt the need to switch things up (and then in turn, write about it) in the first place. We’re all dealing with this pandemic and we’re all doing the best we can. If all I focused on was the news and the depressing state of the world, I would go crazy and not be in the right place mentally to be a good husband or foster parent. So I believe we need the random things that used to be considered normal but now take the very understandable back-burner. They by no means diminish the severity and seriousness of what this virus has done to people around the globe, but I believe they keep us sane, and for some of us, we need that to keep going.

So let’s see how long with live with this setup. I was surprised PJ agreed to it, but he did, and so far, he’s really liking it. I think we’ll make some design changes before deciding 100% if we’re going to keep it like this for the long haul (like switching up some rugs, removing our old dining room chandelier, etc). But that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

Hope you’re staying safe, friend, and finding ways to switch things up if you find you’re needing some sort of (positive) change in the midst of these hard, unpredictable times. Sending our love to you. xoxo.

PS: you can see the room in video form in our newest YouTube video.