This living room was quite impacted and not functional.  In addition to the clutter, the futon sofa was broken and didn't offer a stable place to sit.  As you can imagine, the client was quite overwhelmed, but was enthusiastic about making a total lifestyle change.  The process of working through this room was interspersed with working on other parts of the house and so it took several months to get to the final stages.  This picture looks from the balcony toward the front door.

The picture below looks in from the front door.

This picture looks into the living room from the office.

Stage 1

Our first foray into the living room actually came about because of cleaning out the hall closet.  We wanted to use a couple of small shelving units in the closet that were sitting in this area of the living room.  You can see one of them in the previous picture.  As a result, we ended up widening the path to the office.  Because our main focus this day was on the hall closet, we didn't clear nearly the amount of space as would have normally happened in a typical session.

 

 

Stage 2

When we got to spend our first whole session on the living room, we started with the area right in front of the door and worked our way in as far as we could go.  We worked for four hours on this day.  We uncovered a little table (off to the right) and immediately set that up as a processing center and an in/out staging area.  The boxes of items all along the wall (down far right) were all keeper items and were held in that area for another future go-through.

 

Here's the view from the opposite end of the room:

 

 

Stage 3

It was time to redo the sitting area.  During this session we cleared out all the debris on and around the futon.  Then we demolished the broken futon and tossed the smaller pieces into the dumpster.  The wingback chair, a favorite of the client, had been stuck back in the corner of the dining room, so we pulled it out and cleaned it off.  The end tables and coffee table were cleaned off and set into place and the client was ready to watch her favorite sports games.

 

 

Stage 4

The alcove next to the front door had been occupied by an entertainment center holding a large aquarium and its accessories, books and other items.  During this session we went through all the items piled up in front of the entertainment center and everything on it, setting aside the aquarium and the keeper books and items.  The entertainment center was removed as it wasn't going to be used for anything else.

 

This room is still in process.  Check back for more photos at a later date!