A Retrospective: 7. The Living Room, pre 2007-2015

Well, hey there.

Remember this series?
Neither do I.

No, of course I do. I just got impossibly, overwhelmingly busy last fall and didn't finish. The living room is the very last installment in a series I started last fall to celebrate my blog's eighth anniversary.

In this series, we travel back in time to see at all the changes I made (or didn't make) to the rooms in my humble little house. The last room we looked at was The Kitchen, 2007-2014. If you'd like to start at the beginning, go here: The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014. You can also catch all the retrospective posts under the Prairie Home Tour tab, above.

So. The Living Room.

Err. No, scratch that. It's The Parlour.

That is what my husband calls it. 

It doesn't look like much of a parlour here!

Please click through to read through.

A Retrospective: 6. The Kitchen, 2007-2014

To celebrate my blog's eighth anniversary, we're taking a tour through time and looking at the changes I've made to our house over the years. This is the sixth in the series. The last area to be featured was The Dining Room, 2007- (early) 2015. If you'd like to start at the beginning, go here: The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014. You can also catch all the retrospective posts under the Prairie Home Tour tab, above.

They say some people are kitchen people and others are living room people.

I am a kitchen people. 

When I moved in, my husband was living in the house with two room-mates. After we were married, I began lobbying for re-doing the kitchen. At that time, we were still paying the mortgage and we had only one room-mate. We had a son.

Please click through to read through. Sorry to truncate the post but it is mammoth. Not like the kitchen.

A Retrospective 5.The Dining Room, 2007 to (early) 2015

To celebrate my blog's eighth anniversary, we're taking a tour through time and looking at the changes I've made to our house over the years. This is the fifth in the series. The last areas to be featured were the Bedrooms, 2007-2014. If you'd like to start at the beginning, go here: The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014. You can also catch all the retrospective posts under the Prairie Home Tour tab.

This room has been known by many names. The Office. The Scraproom (or, as it is labeled here on the blog, my "creative space.") Recently, I took to calling it "the study." But that just felt pretentious--especially as I decluttered 80 per cent of the books out of here earlier this year!

So. Let's call it the dining room--which it is about three times a year.

The rest of the year it is my sanctuary, my haven.

It wasn't always that way! In fact, it started out quite the opposite.

These posts are quite long, so click through to read through, thanks!

A Retrospective: 4. The Bedrooms. 2007-2014

For my blog's eighth anniversary, I decided to take us on a tour of the changes I've made to our house over the years. This is the fourth in the series. The last areas to be featured were the service areas: The Bathrooms, Laundry Room and Pantry, 2007-2014. If you want to start at the beginning, go here: The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014. As well, as they are published, each retrospective is also available under the House Tours tab above.

There are three bedrooms in our small house.

There's a fairly small one the main floor (it counts as small because you can just barely fit a double sized bed into it) and two larger ones, upstairs. (Both of them accommodate a double bed--or bigger--nicely.) Here are the floor plans:

These posts are lengthly, so it seemed a good idea to truncate them. Please click through to read through.

A Retrospective: 3. The Bathrooms, Laundry Room and Pantry, 2007-2014

In honour of my blog's eighth anniversary, I am taking us on a tour of the changes I've made to our house over the years. This is the third in the series. The last areas to be featured were the Passageways: Entrys, Hallways and Stairs, 2007-2014. If you want to start at the beginning, go here: The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014


The service areas.

You don't see these areas very much on house tours! Not unless someone has done something stunning, of course. Not to set you up: but I haven't. Done anything stunning, that is. In fact, my downstairs bath is in need of an overhaul. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The Story of a Wall

NB. I actually began this post long before I thought of the retrospective. In fact, I believe it was rediscovering this in my "drafts" folder which inspired me to do the retrospective. So, while it is not a part of the retrospective per se, it is a little side journey, a small look in greatf detail at just one wall of my house over the nearly 19 years we've lived here.


Ready?

The year is maybe 2003, maybe 2004. (I'm going by the size of my daughter at the computer.)

The walls are very red. And I am still using film in the camera.

I tidied things up during the Fall Cure in 2006. But it was still VERY RED and VERY LOUD.

In 2007, during the eight week Fall Cure, I decided I would paint the room a neutral and quieten the whole thing down.

Things continued this way for a long time with various purges along the way, like this one during The Cure of 2009:

2011

2012

Looking a little sparse in 2013

2014

And here, the best I think this wall ever looked, January 2015.

And, now....drum roll, please....

Totally different.
And yet, somehow, not!

A Retrospective: 2. Passageways: Entry ways, Hallways and The Stairs

This is the second in a series of looking back at the changes I've made to the house since this blog began --over eight years ago.

Passageways are all those spaces we pass through--like hallways and entry ways and the stairs. I like them to be functional--and most especially plesant. They are scattered all over the house, though, so I made up floor plans in order to help orient ourselves.

A Retrospective. 1. The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014

In some ways: so much changed!
In others, not so much.

Makeovers inside the house tend to be decorative in nature, low budget and somewhat easily changed.

Changes made outside, though, tend to take much longer (sometimes several years) and are somewhat more permanent. They also tend to be done by my husband!

However, there are a lot of pictures--and it may take a while to get through the whole post. I advise a good beverage.

A Retrospective: A Series of Rooms, 2007-2014

On this very day, eight years ago, I started this blog. There are more than a thousand published posts.

I started it to record my participation in the old eight week Apartment Therapy Online Cure in the fall of 2007. Those were crazy days.

The first photo ever to appear on the blog. It was a developed photograph--scanned in!

There was a small group of us who started our blogs just so we could share our Cures with each other in greater detail than whatever AT had set up. From the enthusiasm and support of those women, I became hooked--on decorating, doing projects, thinking out loud, and sharing ideas and encouragement.

Though I've dabbled in wardrobe planning, and gardening, organizing and cleaning, my main focus on the blog has always been decorating my home. So, in that spirit, I am going to look back at each area of my home and how it has changed over the last eight years. We'll start outside, move our way through the hallways and passageways, look at the hardworking areas, like the bathrooms and the laundry room, then our bedrooms and then on to the dining room, the kitchen and then the living room. I'll post one retrospective a week.

As a grande finale, I'll take us on a tour of the whole house as it is this fall.
Pinky swear.

I hope you enjoy the series.

1. The Front and Back Yards, 2007-2014
2. Passageways: Entrys, Hallways and Stairs, 2007-2014
3. The Bathrooms, Laundry Room and Pantry, 2007-2014
4. The Bedrooms, 2007-2014
5. The Dining Room, 2007-2014
6. The Kitchen, 2007-2014
7. The Living Room, 2007-2014