The Cabin Living Room: After

I hesitate to call this a living room. It’s more like a living nook. This little area is located between the kitchen and the bedrooms and was previously an under-used space, mostly due to the furnishings. But it wasn’t hard to imagine how lovely and cozy this nook could be. Other than closing off the wall between this room and the master bedroom, not much needed to be done here.

As much as I loved the warm wood panels and flooring, we had to make some changes in order to create a cohesive space. Because of all the additions and rearrangements this cabin has lived through, the floors were in bad shape and the walls were different in every room. As you’ve heard from every HGTV show ever, having the same flooring and wall color throughout makes the space feel bigger. Since the wood paneling was already painted white in the kitchen, it made sense to paint it white here as well, and it absolutely feels bigger and brighter.

Add an orange couch and hang a guitar on the wall and now we’re living! This space gets so much use now. This is where we read books before bed, where my husband and son practice the guitar, where I write blog posts, and where we enjoy the warmth from the wood stove on cold nights (which is every night now that it’s fall).

These benches were not ideal here, but they have been moved to my greenhouse where they feel more appropriate and are being used more often.

This couch was the perfect choice for comfort and a fun pop of color.

The door you see in the above photo used to open into the over-sized bathroom. In order to give the kids direct access to the bathroom, instead of walking through our bedroom, this little hallway was created. The kids room is the the doorway on the left and the bathroom is at the end of the hall.

Fun fact: it takes approximately one wheel barrow full of wood to power the wood stove for the night. And surprisingly (to me, at least) the wood stove keeps the whole cabin warm at night, as long as someone gets up between 4 – 5 a.m. to reload it. We’ll see if this changes as we move into winter, but so far we have been very comfortable. And it just feels so darn wholesome to collect firewood every evening and sit around the fire.