Switch it up... Change it up

Good morning friends and Happy New Year to you!!!
I can't believe 2012 is here... the year I will become a wife, the year my place of employment gets a HUGE makeover, and the year of so many other adventures and discoveries I don't even know about yet! Woop Woop!
Remember a few weeks ago when we put up our tree and I started ranting about how I wanted to re-arrange the living room? As I also  mentioned in that post, to me the worst part of holiday decor is taking it down, so two days after Christmas, I dove into it head first and took down ALL of our holiday decor. And it felt good. But we were left with a gaping hole on the giant wall where the tree had been.

Please excuse the mess and crappy TV images...

As you can see in the bottom of the image, Cash's crate is giant and takes up a lot of room in our walkway, and all the furniture is smooshed together toward the right of the room. And we are still dealing with the lack-of-tv-console in the space.
OVER IT!!!!
James left the room to take a shower and I started doing some shuffling of furniture.

 

I shifted the ugly floral chair over next to the wall so it opened up the space as you look in from the front door. It also makes a sitting area that's not focused on the TV, which I like in a room. Then I went to our guest room, aka the land of furniture with no appropriate home, and snagged a small shelving system to put our TV on. James was not sold at all on this idea until I started getting whiny about the speaker from his surround sound blocking part of the TV. The wheels started turning and he disappeared to the garage and suddenly!!!! 

TaaaDaaa!!!! I know I know, kind of an uneventful change but... its soo much better than before! We cut about 6" off the legs of the shelf, so now the speaker sits lower and all of our components are off the ground. We also lost the floral ottoman that was a speaker stand before, and used the random side table that used to hold our TV.
I understand, it still looks like a total shit show, but this is one small step towards success people! The ottoman is GONE and at least now all the elements of the console are similar. And I don't have to stare at the back of that damn chair every time I walk in the front door. Much better.

Moral of the story: Its much easier to convince your man to take part in a project if it involves power tools, and you bring him a beer in the midst of all the chaos.

The end.