how to decorate an open floor plan living room kitchen

hi friends! how are you? i hope thatyou're doing well and that you're feeling a little bit better than theweather is outside today because it's going from like sunny, to gloomy, tosunny, to gloomy so, hopefully, you're just feeling plain old sunny! today, ithought i would share a little bit of an update on where i'm at with decoratingthis place, as well as some helpful tips for getting started on a project likethis. now, i have to admit that i haven't really made a lot of progress since ishowed you around last time. but, if you remember where i was a couple months agoyou'll be happy to know that i have upgraded to some prettier temporaryshades. the sheet and the blanket are now

gone, which is great... right? yes, this is anice aesthetic upgrade and helps to hold me over while i make some decisions, butit is not a permanent solution and i am very much looking forward to somethingthat is more of a permanent solution. between the client projects i've beenworking on, getting started on these videos, other partner projects, and justbalancing my life out again things have been at a standstill... and i reallyhaven't had the stamina or the bandwidth to kind of push this forward. and, now thatkind of puts me in a situation of being the cobbler with no shoes, which is kindof sad and a little embarrassing... um... but it's going to change so it's all fine. plus, iam super picky when it comes to this

type of stuff, so i really haven't foundthings that inspired me and i wanted to be part of this project. however, i haverecently discovered a couple things that i am super excited about, as well as somediy projects that i have on my radar so things are starting to turn around.my vision is coming together a little bit more and i'm just getting moreexcited to finally push this forward and start to get my home more settled, bemore comfortable, and just be inspiring again and the place that i like to callhome. i'm sure many of you have found yourself in decorating situationsbecause you've just moved or you want to makeover a part of your home and you'restanding there going... "i don't know where

to start.""i don't know to do." "i'm so overwhelmed." "where do i start?" "what do i do?" "do i start over here?" you're not alone.even the most well versed designer or home diy-er finds themselves overwhelmedwhen they're starting a new project. but, that's why we simply take a step backand we break it down. to help get your thoughts organized about what you'reabout to do you want to start by making a list. i know it sounds super basic, butit's imperative to help you focus on

what you're about to do and get all yourthoughts in order. it also helps so that you don't continueto cycle back around to the same thing, if you've ever noticed that... you keepthinking about one thing that you need to do. like, for example, that i need totake care of my windows. i know. i keep staring at them every day... but i want toget that thought out of my head so i can move on to something else...so write it down. you want to think of this as your brain dump on decorating.let your creativity run rampant and do not discourage yourself because ofbudget... yet. you never know what you'll be able to diy or find on sale. now, if youremember that you need a coffee maker, or

pots and pans, or something like thatdon't put that on this list. keep this to the project at hand, which is decorating,and remember... down to the smallest detail. so that's cabinet knobs or touching up aspot on a wall somewhere that you need to take care of... write all of that stuffdown. now, you can do this list as one huge master list that you can later gothrough and categorize by room, or you can actually do it where you just startbreaking it out by room from the start. i prefer to break my list out by roombecause that's how my mind thinks. so, i'll go through and i'll have the living room,bedroom, entry, kitchen, bathroom, and i have all of those spaces written out. when you breakthings out by room the one thing you

want to do is make sure you leave spaceat the end of that list so that you can always continue to add to it... because younever know what other things are going to pop in your head and you don't wantto get your list all sloppy, disorganized or have tounnecessarily rewrite it. so, just keep that in mind. the next fun thing we're goingto do is draw a floor plan... to scale. i know! i bet the floor plan part soundsreally fun but the "to scale" apart... hmm... that sounds kind of hard and tedious, right?well, it's not. i promise it's much easier than you think and it's actually goingto save you a lot of frustration and money in the long run. now there areprograms out there online that will be

able to help you create a floor plan,however, i actually still prefer to do the old-school method of graph paper. now,to get started you're going to want to measure your entire space, as well as anynooks and crannies or boxouts, kind of like i have back there in the corner ofmy living room, and any furniture that you have and you want to keep. don'tworry about drawing it to scale at this point. you can just make it really rough.you can see here that mine is actually quite sloppy and really not neat and tidyat this point... totally fine. once you have everything measured and sketched out nowit's time to talk about drawing it to scale. the reason you want to draw itto scale is because it's going to help

you to know what's going to fit andwhat's not going to fit. so, when you go to shop for furniture, bring things intoyour space, you're not going to buy things that are too small and you're notgoing to buy things that are too big... you're going to buy things that are justright... so you can kind of think of yourself as goldilocks. don't be intimidated by thenumbers when it comes to drawing to scale. i know that can be overwhelming,but it's really quite simple and i have faith that you're going to be able to dothis even if you're not a numbers person. so i'm going to break it down for youright now so that we can try a little bit together. so there's only a couplesupplies that you need for this. you

basically need a pencil, a good eraser, aruler, a calculator, and some graph paper... and i'll put a link to all those itemsin the description below in case there's anything you don't have and you want todo a quick order for. now, i like to use an 8 x 8 graph paper because i findthat the squares aren't too big, they're not too small and they're really justthe right size to fit a good-sized space on that piece of paper. so the firstthing we're going to do is determine the scale for our floor plan... and what thatmeans is we're basically figuring out how many inches each one ofthese little teeny, tiny squares is going to represent... and to do that i'm going totake the longest measurement that i have,

which for this space is 243... and i'mgoing to divide that by 2....and that equals 121.5. now, there aren't 121squares going across this piece of paper. there's actually only 88, so that's notgoing to work for our scale. so next i'm going to try again and i'm going to take243 and this time i'm going to divide it by 3 and that equals 81, which is greatbecause that's actually going to fit. so that means our scale is going to be 3inches equals 1 teeny, tiny square on this piece of paper. so now to lay out myfloor plan i just take every measurement that i have and i divide it by 3 andthat's going to tell me exactly how many squares each one of those measurementsis equal to. so, let's do a little bit

together... so i know that the length of myspace is 81 squares so i'm going to draw 81 squares... and then the width i'm goingto take 156 and i'm dividing that by 3 and that equals 52... so i'm going to dothe width as 52... and then i'm going to just finish off the space... and once the spaceis squared off now i'm going to start to draw on the windows, which i know thewindow is 27 inches from the corner... so i'm going to do nine squares and startto draw the window... and then i know the window is 36 inches, which is 12 squares...so i'm going to draw 12 squares to finish that window... and i'm going to keepdoing that all the way around until i land up with my finished space. a littletip i have for you... once you have the

general outline drawn, go over it againin pen so that way, if you have to erase any furniture as you're drawing it in,you don't have to worry about erasing the walls or the windows. it's going tomake your life so much easier so take that extra step. but, now once this wholegeneral outline is complete it's time to start to have some fun with thefurniture... and you can start to add that in in a couple different ways. you can either draw it in with pencil just keeping thescale in mind that you've already determined, or you can actually cut outlittle pieces of furniture to scale that you can easily just shift around. i,personally, prefer to draw in my

furniture, but if you have severaldifferent floor plans in your mind that you want to test out it can be easier toactually cut out the furniture so you can easily shift it around. but that's it!it's really not too hard, right? to draw floor plans of scale... it's really pretty easy. now,next time i'm going to get into a little bit more of the details in terms oflaying out furniture and some measurements to take into consideration,so be sure to tune in for that... and i'll definitely be sharing some things aboutwhat i'm going to do within my space as well. so, i hope that you found this videohelpful today and that you enjoyed it. and, if you did,please, do me a favor and click that thumbs

up button, share it with someone you wantto do a makeover with, and be sure to tap the subscribe button so we can continueto talk about this fun makeover and some different ideas. thanks again forwatching. i'll see you soon.

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