The living room

Warning:  The following post is long.  Get coffee.  Also, I took the pictures in bad lighting, so the colors are off, not that it matters to the content of the post, and not that I don't often take bad pictures.  I do.  I just wanted you to know that I know.  Now you know.  Let's move on.

When we bought this house, one of the selling points was the open floor plan.  A large kitchen leading into a large living room is a great way to go if you like entertaining like we do.

The previous owners had a couch whose back was to the kitchen, where the orange and wood chair is now.  It essentially partitioned the space.  I didn't want to block the sightline from the kitchen to the living room, so we put our matching loveseat in the basement and just used the couch to keep the space open.  I really dislike having to walk around furniture to get into a space. 

I love the airy look we have going on, but I'm finding the placement of our furniture actually a little too far apart for easy conversation.  The two side chairs in the space are almost twelve feet apart!  Picture it:  "Hello! {hello! hello! hello!}  How are you? {how are you? how are you? how are you?}"

The furniture was originally placed this way to view the T.V. in the armoire.  However, we ended up deciding that T.V. wasn't necessary for our family here, and the set went into the basement instead, so the armoire is being used as storage.  So what I'm saying is, our furniture looks at a storage cabinet.

Now that we have been in the house for a year and are starting to have guests over more often, we need to make some changes so that the arrangement works for us.  We need to cozy things up. 

I would love some input from you.  How would you arrange the space?  There are several pieces that don't need to remain. 

1.  The kid stuff is flexible and can be reconfigured in another way or in another room.
2.  The armoire can go to craigslist or the basement. 
3.  The close orange chair below is soon going to be reupholstered and will live in our bedroom. 
4.  The rocking chair can live in Jack's room.

I have lots of projects to do in order to finish this room, but they are guided by the furniture placement.  So here are my options as I see them.  I would love your thoughts.  I can sometimes get tunnel vision, and it would be nice to get some outside input.  You can comment on Facebook, on the blog, or email me, but give me your ideas, people!

1.  Bring the loveseat back upstairs to sit opposite the fireplace at a right angle with the current couch.  It would be off center to the fireplace from this viewpoint and we might need to add a console table in front of the window in order to center everything if it looks bad.  I don't know if that makes sense, but I don't know how to better explain it.  I have an issue with the beige carpet, beige walls, and dark beige couches if we do this, but I don't want to paint more of the room orange.  It would be overwhelming.

2.  Move the couch to the center of the room across from the fireplace, essentially splitting the room into two separate sections.  This idea intrigues me.  We'd still have the beigy thing going on, but in this scenario there would be lots of space behind the couch in which to add colorful accents.  But how would we handle things like lamp cords?  We're not putting a plug in the floor. 

3.  Buy/build a backless couch or chaise in place of the loveseat.  It would give us extra seating without blocking the view.  I have a dream of hanging an indoor loungy couch-sized swing, but Handsome Hero put the kibosh on that.  Drat his rational nature.

Here's another picture for your inspection.  At the risk of being overly disclaimerly, this picture makes what is actually a vibrant room look dingy.



So there you go.  My dilemma.  Which do you think would work best?  Or do you have another thought altogether?  I'm officially open for comment.