Making Our Small 1970's Living Room Feel Bigger {Before & After}
With enough planning and creativity, you can turn a small space into one that works for you! Our home was probably the 10th or 11th home we looked at in a two month span, so I had seen smaller living rooms than the one in our house. A lot of the homes in the area we were looking to buy were built in the 1970’s and it showed. Even after some major home renovations and even large additions, some homes still had very tiny living spaces. It was a huge turn-off and I started to wonder if I could even handle it. My husband assured me that I would “do what you always do and make it nice”, but I really had my doubts.
Since I had seen even smaller living rooms with worse floor plans, I wasn’t too shocked at the size of this home’s living area. I also thought that with the right layout, I could probably make it feel bigger and more livable.
This fireplace was bigger in person than it appears in these photos. Since it was so huge and also wood-burning, I was pretty sure removing it was our best bet. We wouldn’t be using a fireplace often, much less one that required real wood and fire to use. We do live in Florida, after all, and the gas fireplace at our last house was used probably 5 cold night out of the year. Certainly nice to have, as long as isn’t completely ruining the flow of your living room!
In looking at a new space, the first thing you should be considering is where the furniture will go. What type of layout makes sense for you and your family? As you can see in the image below, the sliding glass door takes up a good portion of the opposite wall. The light streaming in from this door and the placement of the garage door directly across from it meant that the back wall (directly in front of the kitchen island) would be the only sensible place to hang a TV.
I’m not sure where the furniture was when the previous owners lived here, but this was not going to work for us!
Besides tearing out the fireplace to get more square footage, broadening the view outside and letting in more light with a larger sliding glass door would also help the space feel larger and more airy. With only 8 foot ceilings, we could use all the extra “airiness” we could get. ;) The door below is just a standard 6 foot slider. We chose to replace it with an 8 foot sliding glass door that was also hurricane rated. This means that there are two layers of extra strong glass. If this outside layer cracked from debris hitting our door, the inside would still be untouched and intact. Being just a few miles from the ocean, it is worth investing a little more in your property for safety precautions.
There was one main issue we had with this home that took a bit of brainstorming, measuring and pushing on my part. The first contractor we spoke with told me that there wasn’t enough room in our garage to build a laundry room into it. I disagreed. After measuring both of our vehicles (a small and large SUV), I knew that there would be enough space to sacrifice a bit of garage storage to have our laundry room enclosed. The washer and dryer were previously in the garage on the ledge that stuck out a few feet from the shared wall you see here on the left. They had been there since the ‘70’s when the house was built and it’s not uncommon in older homes, especially in warmer climates. This door you see below goes out to the garage. I’ll tackle that whole laundry room situation in a later post, but what you need to know in terms of how it impacted the living room, is that the doorway for the laundry room is now on the same wall as the garage door. This is just another reason that the fireplace had to be removed.
Before deciding exactly where the laundry room door should go, I did my homework! I actually created the living room floor plan on a grid sheet and used the furniture measurements to decide how far away from the back wall the laundry room door should be. There would be a sofa facing the tv wall and an arm chair in each corner on either side of the TV. I didn’t want the arm chair to block this doorway at all.
Here’s another shot of the garage door. To the right on that wall is where the laundry room door was added. To the left is the dining room and you can see the arch of the office door.
The opposite wall was patched up after replacing the slider. Can you see how much more light it lets in already?
The packages on the floor are actually the curtains I brought home from IKEA to see how the color looked in our lighting. Everything was taped off and being painted.
Again, the door on the left is the garage entry, the door on the right is for the laundry room. When I found the perfect sofa for our living room, I used masking tape to outline where it would sit. The sofa actually has a foot rest that pulls out to create one large platform for watching movies and getting comfy. It fits perfectly with extra space between the two doors on this wall. We actually left a walkway on either side of the sofa so that it would be easier to get to the laundry room and you wouldn’t have to weave through a maze of furniture.
Paint was up, and fixtures were being replaced. Miss Summer will be doing her best Vanna White impressions for the remainder of this post. It’s tough when you don’t have arms, so cut her some slack.
If you haven’t seen our kitchen makeover yet, you can click on the links below to see all the details!
Kitchen Remodel Progress: Fixtures, Backsplash & Countertop Details
Kitchen Cabinet Paint Color Reveal {Before & After}
Some of these photos were just snapped with my iPhone. It was pretty tough to get over to the new house and check on the renovation progress with work and living 40 minutes away with traffic! The kitchen counters had just been installed and we were a few days away from our move-in date.
Shortly after moving in, we had the TV and sound system installed. This entailed all wireless functionality. The receiver, cable box and cords to the security and sound systems are housed in the corner of the laundry room. The speakers for surround sound are in the ceiling and the sub woofer was installed in the back left wall corner. It would be very discrete since I planned to have an arm chair right next to it.
Because women tend to care more about aesthetics than men do, it seemed that I was the only one in the room that thought the large, black sound bar below our Frame TV was a complete eye sore! Our sound technician was understanding and let me have a week to live with it and see if I still couldn’t stand it after a few days lol. With each day I felt more sure that the sound bar was completely defeating the purpose of buying a (definitely not cheap) 65” Samsung Frame TV. You see, if you aren’t familiar with the Frame TV, it’s selling feature is that it is flush mounted to the wall and has a censor that flips the screen to art when it detects human presence. You can change this setting based on the amount of light in the room and even put it on a timer. But the bottom line was that the TV would no longer be fooling anyone into thinking it was art with a large black speaker attached to the bottom of it. My husband graciously conceded and said he really didn’t care as long as the sound was still good. So, our sound technician removed the sound bar and installed three round ceiling speakers instead. The speakers themselves are of the same high quality as the ones in the sound bar. And let me assure you, it still sounds great! Whether we’re watching TV, a movie or I’m listening to my favorite reggae station on Pandora, the sound is nice and clear.
Our pull-out sofa arrived on the same day.
Again, please excuse the terrible phone pictures snapped at night! Ya gotta do what ya gotta do! I was a very busy bee during this entire time and I unpacked everything pretty much by myself since my husband had to work and I cannot stand a chaotic mess! I get energized by the thought of relaxing in a calming space, so I kept working until the space was livable.
It’s kind of a tight squeeze, but it works pretty well for us! This sofa is 91” long and pulls out to the size of a queen bed! We can easily pass by either side of it.
My trusty seagrass rug from our last family room was the perfect option for this space. With a lot of foot traffic, I knew it would fare just fine, as it did the past 5 years that we had it! I rolled it out and somehow managed to get it underneath the sofa all by myself. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I sat for a moment to admire my work. As you can see, there would be plenty of room here for my husband and Summer. :) She’s not allowed on furniture, nor has she ever tried to jump up, but she does occasionally sit like a human with her feet on the floor. This is why you’ll see a throw blanket on the edge of the sofa when it’s pulled out…just in case she decided to back her rump up onto the sofa for a sit. I can toss the throw into the wash and our sofa still remains fresh and free of dog hair!
She caught me off guard - I hadn’t laid out the throw yet, but since she was already planted there, I just snapped a picture before telling her to get her big booty off my new sofa! Haha
Adding a few throw pillows really changed the look of our sofa. The curtains are from IKEA and they are semi-sheer. Unfortunately, right after I bought several pairs of them, they were discontinued! When I shared them on my Instagram stories, there were lots of questions about them. I have no idea why IKEA would want to discontinue a loved product, but they did. They are the perfect amount of shade for the sun that beams in through our doors in the morning. They still let a good amount of filtered light in, though. I have since hemmed the bottom of the curtains to the right length and added matte black rings and curtain clips. Don’t mind all the stuff in the shot - this is still a work in progress lol!
These are my favorite side tables from Pineapples Palms, Too! It’s the cutest high-end boutique in Jupiter, Florida and they sent me two of these amazing octagonal woven abaco side tables for our new home! I love they beachy vibe they give off and have gotten so many complements on them via Instagram.
Meanwhile, the other side of our living room was looking pretty pathetic. You can see the holes where the sound bar used to be and I hadn’t ordered my arm chairs yet.
The white FARLOV arm chairs I ordered from IKEA arrived and I immediately got to work. Unpacking the boxes took longer than putting the actual chair together.
We still need to have the final hole in the wall under the TV patched up. We didn’t decide to go “wireless” and remove the need for a console table until after the contractors had installed the holes for us.
After ironing the covers, adding a couple throw pillows I had sitting in the spare bedroom and changing the art on my TV, this room is looking much more presentable! My side tables look perfect here and I think if you try hard enough, you can imagine a beach out the backdoor. We think having the canal off the intracoastal waterway is definitely a close second. ;)
Look at how much room we gained by eliminating that bulky fireplace!
The sofa and throw pillows really go well with our kitchen renovation and cabinet makeover. I can’t wait to add the new hardware I ordered and get those curtains completed! It’s a never-ending list, but at least that means I’m not bored! ;)
