812: The Home - The Living Room

If the kitchen is the heart of a home, then the living room is its soul, at least at my childhood home.  My childhood memories are replete with kitchen time - meals (of course), crafts and games at the table, and shining my spikes for Saturday's football game.

But, when all of that was done - it was to the living room.  Mind you, this was a time when there were no mobile devices, and aside from the small black and white TV in my folks' room, there was just the one TV in the living room - with no remote.  It was in the living room that we gathered as a family to watch all those good ol' shows of the 70s and 80s, eat popcorn while laying on the floor watching Creature Feature and Chiller on Friday and Saturday nights...and of course - celebrating Christmas!  Anyway, to the best of my memory, this is pretty much what the living room looked like when we first moved in back in, I think '71:

Here's looking the other direction...

Oh gosh, I just noticed mom's old desk back there!  I have no idea when it went away or where, but we had that old desk chair probably into the '90s!  Maybe the very first step at updating the living room was painting the trim.  If I remember correctly, that was a kind of light green as you might be able to get a hint of on the front door, of which I wrote in a post about the front room.

 Now that I think of it, if my memory serves - it was very close to the same green in the kitchen here at 173!

At some point Dad hung wall paneling on the south wall of the living room.  Here's my kid brother and sister sitting right next to that old TV I was talking about, but you can also glimpse the birch wall paneling...

Just for fun I went searching for birch paneling, but I can't find any quite like that.  I think we had that for quite a few years.  And here's a shot looking into the kitchen.  Funny thing, I still remember my Dad doing a headstand and Mom taking the picture.  What I don't remember is...why?

Unfortunately, I just couldn;t find a good picture of the next redo.  But in the left hand side of the next picture, you can spy a bit of the dark mahogany paneling Dad put in on that same south wall.  Also, by the time he did that, the front room had been built and Dad had pulled the door trim and put in a a brick facing.  

The next stage was probably in the last 10 years or so.  Mom and Dad went in a totally new direction.  Away with the panelling and a new era of light colors and no more carpeting!  And by the way - check out the ceiling, Dad swirled every inch of that ceiling - talk about patience!

And looking the other way.  Like I said, Christmas is always in the living room!  Andy Rooney said, "One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."  How true is that?

One final shot!