Image by Roger Davies for Bailey McCarthy

With the Holidays approaching, I am in full on nesting mode. Our house has been pretty much “done” since we moved in two years ago, and besides my little snafu with the guest bedroom, I have kept my near-constant itch to redecorate in check. However, now that we have been here for a few years and our babies aren’t babies anymore, we are transitioning the way we use a few of our downstairs spaces to reflect how we live in our house now. Nothing major, but enough to scratch my itch and get me excited to entertain in newly fluffed spaces this holiday season.

The living room is one room I probably will not mess with for a long time (famous last words) since I had such a time getting it right this first time- check out my “before & after” post for a refresher. Plus, there is plenty to play with arranging and re-arranging art in the room as you will see in this post, so I think I’ll be able to leave this one alone for awhile. 

For instance, the top picture was taken a few months after our House Beautiful shoot, and as you can see from the magazine image below I already had changed out the piece behind the yellow chair.

Photo by Trevor Tondro for House Beautiful styling by Frances Bailey

We had been waiting on a photograph from Denise de la Rue’s Matador series to arrive for awhile, and when it did, I moved the Nick Knight floral to the other side of the room. I loved how the positioning of the matador in front of the woman’s portrait would be continued by someone sitting in the yellow chair. Kind of like a fun house mirror.

See? I enjoy it. 

Another image from our shoot with Roger Davies shows the fireplace- if you are trying to visualize the flow, to the right of the fireplace is our piano and then the entry to the library. 

Image by Roger Davies for Bailey McCarthy

A few months ago Max Burkhalter came and shot the room for our post with Gray Malin, and the piece above the fireplace had been moved to Grace’s room and replaced with one of Gray’s beautiful pieces!

Image by Max Burkhalter for Bailey McCarthy

By then, I had gotten around to properly recovering the benches in front of the fireplace and had ‘cessorized the side tables a bit. One of my favorite things we did in this room is installing the art hanging system into the crown moulding. You can see it in the above picture, but basically there is a track that is hidden behind the crown where you can pop these little wires in to suspend-hang your art. It makes it super easy to level/adjust, and I don’t have to worry about messing up out lacquer walls every time I get the itch to rearrange!

So that is how our living room has evolved over the past few years- nothing major, but it’s fun to be able to play around as you add layers to your space. Stay tuned for some of the bigger changes, and a few spaces I don’t think I have featured before!

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