Living Room

The living room is the first fully finished room. Once I take down Christmas I will have to start all over again, but as of now it is finished.

This is the view from the original dining room into the living room. There were doors separating the 2 rooms and a smaller closed in doorway. We opened it up to create a more free flowing modern space, which is contrary to Victorian architecture that featured lots of small separated rooms.

 

I think the below picture helps give perspective. On the right is the front door and on the left is the (boarded up) large front window in the living room.

 

 

Much more open and cozy all at the same time.

The fireplace in the living room still had the original mantel (from what we can tell) with tiles from the early 1900s or possibly original. Either way they were a little too “special” to leave.  The fire place survived all of demolition and then for some reason AFTER we moved in we decided to tear it apart.

  

This demolition happened on a Wednesday night at 9:30 due to a pinterest picture. (“Honey, do you think we can do this http://www.pinterest.com/pin/48624870950482220/ with our fireplace?”) I do not recommend this. It will result in a very tired and dirty wife, but the answer was yes there was very pretty brick hiding under all the puke green, rose patterned tile.

   

It sent soot throughout my entire house and created many extra hours of cleaning, and gave me a mini heart attack when I went to paint the ORIGINAL mantle white but I LOVE it and am so glad I did. Also, a side note, our mantle has acorns carved into it which I found a bit odd until our neighbor informed us that this is a historical Kansas City feature and the old train station features acorns in its woodwork. We now have to take a trip to see these acorns and verify this fact, but makes a little more sense as to why we have an acorn mantle.

The main structural change that happened in the living room was to get rid of one door. We removed the door that connected the entryway directly to the living room (the door on the left in the first picture). It makes for a more cozy and useable living room and eliminated having 3 door ways within a foot of each other.

   

In this set, the blank angled wall on this middle picture is where the door used to be.

 

The house had all of its original windows with some of the weights still intact, but most of the windows falling apart. We got an awesome loan through the city for energy improvements so we were able to put in all new insulation, HVAC and windows with no interest. We just learned that the entire front window used to be stained glass. The family who had owned the house for 60+ years and sold the house in the 1980s to the family we purchased it from sold out all of the stained glass from this window and from above the front door to pay for the nursing home. We are hoping to eventually replace some of it, but did maintain the original window layout in our replacement.

The fireplace wall was the topic of much debate. I am very glad we ended up leaving it exposed brick. Our energy guy is appalled that we would even consider this, but it is a great focal point for the room.

 

      

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from the Williams Family! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.