As promised, here come photos of our new living room space! The living room of our new home was a space that made me feel sad. I didn’t find there to be anything charming about it, and I was coming from a living room with a huge wall of built-in bookshelves and cabinets surrounding a brick fireplace!

We first started by having the carpet removed and adding in hardwood floors to the living room so the main floor would be cohesive in the flooring. Once the carpet was ripped up, I immediately fell in LOVE with the wall of windows!! Amazing how the windows didn’t look like anything super lovely because the owners before us always had the dark blinds drawn, and the couches in front of them didn’t help either :) Keep reading for what I did to the space! I measured the space below and to the sides of the giant window, and then went to ikea.com with eager anticipation…because I KNEW this window was calling for a window seat, and the only way we afford it is if some pre-made something from Ikea would fit. A custom window seat would have been amazing but also very pricey. Guess what happened?! Well, four Ikea pieces fit just about PERFECTLY in this space and I was so pumped! I knew a window seat and two bookcases would give this room the personality it needed. And of course, space to store some books and pretties and our kids’ TOYS! A huge must! :)

The window seat is two Kallax bookcases on their side, and then my dad built a frame for it to sit on so it didn’t look as much like two bookcases sitting on the floor :) and so that there would be air flow for the vent directly underneath it. If you look closely in the pics, you’ll see an open space to either side of the bookcase – well, that empty space is no more! My handy dad built that in for me so it looks like it’s meant to be! I’m so thankful for his help!!

The window seat was three pieces of wood sectioned together to make one long (nearly 10 feet!) board, and then I glued 1″ foam on it and stapled fabric around it. It’s quite imperfect if you look closely, but I’m so not about perfection! It does the job!

The white tubs are made to go with the Kallax units from Ikea as well. They’re perfect storage to for toys!

The bookcases that plank the window seat are Billy Bookcases with height extenders. I couldn’t have made them fit so perfectly with the height of the windows if I had tried! They are anchored to the wall very well, so no fear of them tipping over. Someday, I’d love to fill in the gap between the bookcases and the walls to make it look seamlessly built-in.

Here was the space on the day we moved in, before the carpet was torn out and hardwoods added:

And a couple other in-progress shots: