Living Room Revisited

If my living room had a theme song it would be, to the tune of The Wheels On the Bus, "The things in the room go round and round, round and round, round and round.  The things in the room go round and round, all through the years."  I just can't seem to stop pushing the furniture around.  I think this is the fifth furniture arrangement in five years.

Anyway...here we go, round five!  I wanted to center the arrangement on the fireplace and also bring the couch and two chairs closer together to make for a better conversation area.

Here's a reminder of how the furniture was situated just last week:

 

And here we are with the furniture pulled together and centered on the fireplace.  Notice my little DIY X benches peeking out behind the coffee table!

The downside is that it makes the room feel a bit smaller.  The upside, for me at least, is that things feel balanced now.  It's also much better for sitting and talking when we have people over.

I added a few new pillows to the room this fall as well.  Scott claims I have purchased a pillow a week since we moved into the house.  I said to him, "That would mean we had over 450 pillows by now," to which he replied, "Sounds about right."  Hilarious.

The blue crewelwork pillow on the couch (above) is from West Elm and the back pillows on the chairs (below), also in crewelwork, were recent Home Goods finds.

I made a little reading nook for Ada and Ellie in the back of the room, to the left of the tan chair, with a vintage toy chest, their book basket, and the two little-person rockers we have.  The green leather one is an exact replica of the chair my upholsterer great-grandfather made for my mom's first birthday.  My parents had it made for Ada when she turned one.  The patterned rocker was a thrifted chair I pulled apart and reupholstered.

So what do you think?  Better before or better now?  Do you like symmetry in your rooms or do you play by your own rules?  I like the new setup but miss the open space in the center just a bit.

The big dilemma remaining in this room is what to do with the couch, which has a gigantic hole in the leather on the center cushion.  I've been toying with the idea of reupholstering it but am a bit overwhelmed at what I think the time commitment would be.  Have any of you ever reupholstered a couch?  Am I nuts to be considering this?