Prepping for the "Brown Room"

Ah...the living room. How long have I been talking about painting this room? Two months? Four months? Longer? I don't know, I've lost count. But it doesn't matter because the time has come and the living room is getting painted this weekend! Woo hoo!

I'd like to say that I planned to decorate this room monochromatically (is that a word?), but I did not. And somehow, it's now become the brown room.

Here is the couch from the furniture set we just bought (there are two chairs that go with this). We wanted leather, we knew that, but I was leaning more in a contemporary direction. We searched and searched, and we just couldn't find a set we liked. When we saw this traditional set, we knew the search was over. So this brown furniture has led to...

...brown paint. The color is Behr's "Toffee Crunch." We wanted the paint to coordinate with Behr's Gobi Desert in the dining room, which is right next to the living room. And we wanted to keep the room neutral feeling since I often like to change out the decor.

If you recall, I already have the above brown curtains from our apartment, and I'd like to use them again. I'm hoping that from the curtains is where the pops of color will get pulled. The curtains have red, orange, blue, and green in them. The dining room has dark red curtains. I found matching red sheers at a garage sale (brand new from Pottery Barn!) that I'm thinking of using them under the brown curtains above. If that works out and I like the way it looks...

...then maybe I can get an area rug that plays up some of the red and orange in the curtains. I like the above one from Target, but I'm still not positive if it's what I want. However, since everything is so solid, I like the idea of going bold with the rug.

And then some more color can come in throug a couple of pretty pillows. All of the above examples are from Pier 1.

Oh, and here's a quick look at how I'm thinking of laying out of the room. (Here's a link to room planner...lots of fun!) The piece in the bottom right corner is an antique buffet. On the opposite side of the room is the dog crate...not something I'd consider a "design element" but Dex needs to sleep somewhere. He used to sleep where the buffet is going to go, but now he's getting moved. Poor puppy.

So that's that. More pictures to come later once the room starts to come together.