Before and After

No, this isn't a post with my elbow in it, and I am alive - it didn't kill me.
Despite the whole elbow thing happening this week, we managed to finish the living room rearrangement. Well sort of finish. In the ideal world where we had infinite money we would probably get a new carpet, the couch from the HGTV Urban Oasis apartment, and maybe a new chair. Eventually, eventually. For now, getting rid of the IKEA bookcases (nothing really wrong with them until the movers punched holes in them when we moved in - so yes, we've lived with them like that for two years) and my old TV stand (when I made the dumbest purchase ever and, in my cheapness, bought the last non-flat screen TV ever made).
So, the old bookcases did not look bad, by any means:
Note: The white thing all the way on the right is a cabinet that we used as a printer/supply stand. Yes, those are Mr. D's socks drying on the Rock Band drums.

This is what new living room looks like:

Not nearly as dark, and not just because the lighting is better. Honestly, part of it is that we got rid of (taking to the Strand (kind of like Half Price Books) and I say taking, because they are boxed up in the bedroom right now) a LOT of our books. While I would like to have bookshelves full of books, we decided to only keep ones we use all the time (ie cookbooks or bar books) or might actually look at again. Lately, we've been reading on the iPhones/Kindle (Mr. D got one for Christmas - actually two in the year of multiple Christmas gifts), so we don't have books, except for cookbooks or ones that are given to us.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. The printer is now on the wine fridge, which was previously a junk repository. The only issue now that white cabinet is gone, is that the curtain that just went to the top of it now doesn't cover the newly exposed section of window. The curtains are just panels from Bed, Bath & Beyond, but now they're out of the long ones - everywhere. So a new window treatment solution is in order. Sigh.

Big thank you to Mr. D for arranging for Salvation Army to come pick up the old TV stand (he called Salvation Army, and I talked the doorman into keeping it in the package closet until they came). They're one of the few places that will pick up donations in NYC. We (I) decided the bookshelves were too damaged to salvage - the fact that they nearly fell on top of me while I was taking them apart and wobbled from side to side (as in you could make the shelf not have right angles) made me think Salvation Army wouldn't have taken it anyway.