A Room for Living + the Finished Fireplace

THE DEXTER HOUSE It's been a while (a long while) since I showed you the living room at the Dexter House.  So today, I want to show you what this space looks like now and how the fireplace turned out.

The living room is a powerhouse room for us.  We relax here.  We play here.  We live here.  Everyday this space is strewn with dinosaurs and trucks and train sets and baby books.  And when we put those away (they're stored in a bedroom closet), we pull out blankets to build forts or hunt the imaginary big bad wolf at the window or watch dinosaur train on the TV.  I tell you all this so that you understand when I say, this room does not look like what it would have looked like pre-children.  There's no long coffee table or cozy hanging chair by the window - two things I would love to add - because that would cut into the boys' play space.  And we can't have that.

So our living room is a minimalist design.  Something I'll just call unfinished-but-finished, a.k.a. kid-friendly.

The living room is made eternally more cozy by the addition of a fireplace.  As you may recall, there was no fireplace in this room originally, so we added one.  We picked out a gas insert, framed a structure around it, tiled the surround, and added a mantle.

And this is a look at the finished fireplace:

So that’s how our living room/family room/play room turned out.  What do you think of the fireplace and our minimalist-because-we-had-to-leave-space-to-play look?

Resources: Rug Pad, RugPadUSA | Rug (Mirabelle in Cobalt), Lulu and Georgia| Couch (Rose in Narwahl velvet), Interior Define | Cement tiles, Overstock | Mantle, oak, Hardwood Industries | Gas insert (Lopi), Armstrong's Stove and Spa | Rocking chair, Industry West (out of stock; similar) | Black and white throw, Anthropologie | Curtains, Ikea | Animal head, Ebay

xoxo -Cathy

p.s. there are so many living rooms that I love, like this one and this one!  You'll probably not be surprised to know that I have a whole board of living rooms on Pinterest.

p.p.s. we've been cooking with a whole lot less sugar around here.  And I'm dying to try these!

p.p.p.s. Need a pick-me-up on this gray, winter day?  How about this amazing kitchen!