living room, summer 2021. – gentino family

One of our favorite changes we’ve made to this house is adding the living room bookshelf a year ago.

It still makes us so happy.

People ask me if it’s a pain to access the books, and the answer is: not at all! I can easily climb on the sofa arm or pull in a chair to reach books. Having all the floor space free for furniture is a much better use of the space for us.

The bookshelf was my Mother’s Day gift from David last year. This year, he told me I could order a new front door. This is something I’ve thought about for awhile, and after we put a new driveway in this spring, I wanted one even more. Well, I researched many front doors from many different stores and companies. I finally settled on a company, but when I spoke to them, they were so backed up in orders that it would take months for a door we ordered to arrive.

In the meantime, I got a bee in my bonnet to get a new TV stand/dresser.

Here’s what it looked like before:

Not bad. But that wall felt a little plain to me. Even more important, the charming little white buffet is too small for our television and is on wheels, which means every time the boys pulled the shoe basket out, the whole thing wobbled too much for my liking.

So the Mother’s-Day-front-door ended up becoming the Mother’s-Day-TV cabinet.

Here it is!

Doesn’t that look better?

This is the first real, grown-up piece of furniture I’ve purchased new. As in, it’s made of real wood and doesn’t need to be put together once you bring it home. It also weighs a ton. Isn’t it fun and unique? The slats in the doors are my favorite.

And have no fear, we still have the white buffet. It now lives on the front porch and looks much better there.

My friend Annie came over and helped shop my house to create the gallery wall around the TV and make the whole room look cozier (along with other parts of the house), and the black painted bamboo is from my in-laws’ back yard. If you’re wondering why they happen to have not one but multiple pieces of perfectly distressed black bamboo in their yard, then clearly you don’t know Steve. David calls it my asherah pole; Trevor calls it my rain stick. Let them laugh! I like it.

The cabinet and drawers are all filled with our collection of games and puzzles (with more in the attic). Our whole family enjoys games, but no one as much as Gabe.

Both the tray on the coffee table and hand-stitched Guatemalan blanket hanging on the loveseat are two treasures I found at a neighborhood yard sale this past weekend. I still can’t believe no one had snatched them up before I arrived at 9 am. That blanket is truly amazing.

Below is a picture of our hall built-in bookcase to show you that not every project gets finished around here. As you can see, the inside has yet to be painted, four years later! This is all on me, guys. David did more than his fair share of painting for our renovations.