Shabby cottage chic meets french country cottage in my living room redo

The living room is almost finished!  Ok, it looks finished and, right now, it needs to be finished; however, I'm sure there will be tweaking in the near future....Who am I kidding? There will definitely be tweaking (before I even posted this, I'd already changed some things! Look closely and you'll see some differences between some of the "after" pictures!) Anyway, on to the present.

Here are the "befores" and "afters":

 

 Really all I did in this room was paint, clean and move in!  Unfortunately, we ran out of the reno budget sooner than we thought thanks to some unplanned expenses (might I suggest, to anyone renovating an old home, a fairly large contingency fund...) and were not able to refinish the floors.  I've justified it by telling myself we have young children and a large dog, so why bother? They'll just rescratch them.  That worked for about a week.  It's back to driving me crazy. 

My cluttered English-country-cottage-cozy decorating for the window seats under each window flanking the fireplace until I can afford built-in glass door bookcases (or figure out how to build them myself).  

This house is an exercise in patience and decorating in stages.  Not being a patient person, I'm finding it incredibly challenging....  Built-in bookcases are stage 2, or 3.  Translation - we're out of money and it's going to be awhile:(

Built-in bookcaes in the living room....

Oh, do I have ideas!  The budget to create them?  No, not so much...  Can't keep a girl from dreaming!  Let's start with a photo of what I'm dealing with.  This is the room you see on your right when you walk in my front door.  I wish I'd gotten a better picture of the columns on each side of the entrance.  They are really beautiful!

The left side of the room looking into the dining room (which I'll discuss another time...) and features gorgeous pocket doors, only one of which works (again, best saved for another post....)

The right side of the room facing the front.

I see built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace.  That's my dream.  Everyone else seems to think I should keep the window seats.  Apparently they are completely unaware (thankfully) of the amount of stuff pretty things I have that need to be displayed!  Since it's not in the budget right now anyway, I'll save that battle for later (but it's still fun to look!).

I love the arches at the top!

 Oohh! I like the beamed ceiling! 

Focus Kate, focus....