We have lived in our house for over five years now and yet we still do not have a proper living room. Of course, we have a living room, but not one that entices people to sit down and relax. This is horribly unfortunate since the room has a huge picture window that has a fabulous view of the Coast Range; one of the two main selling points of the house (huge kitchen was another one). We know that purchasing the right furniture is all this neglected room needs.

Today we took the first step in making this space inviting. I started by firing up OmniGraffle on the iPad¹ and grabbing a tape measure. After some measurements and doodling in OmniGraffle I had a template with our living room dimensions and the furniture² we thought we wanted.

I’m sure some of you think this may be a bit over the top, but the exercise allowed us to play with various configurations and options. True, it took me extra time to create the living room template to perfect scale, but once it was done, it was fantastic. In less than five minutes I created six different configurations.

The configuration above is what we originally envisioned. While we were fairly confident that our vision would work in the room we now know without a doubt that it does indeed work. Which is fantastic to know before spending thousand of dollars and committing to furniture for years.