Hello. I recently bought an older home in the past 2 months. It is a smaller simple Bungalow, but it sits on 3 acres and has a lot of charm. I plan to go through it one room at a time and eventually add a third bedroom and second bath in the back.

I am starting with the living room and just kind of planning and budgeting for now. It is all plaster and lathe. I am going to gut the living room to the studs. I need to put in fire blocking, redo electrical, and put in insulation anyway. Plus it has wallpaper covering the entire walls too.

I am having a hard time deciding what to do with the room. It is a fairly large room. roughly 28 foot wide by a little over 14 foot deepr and 9 foot ceilings.

I am not so much concerned with the floors. The hardwoods are in pretty nice shape, but they are patch-worky in spots, not level 100% in some, and I want to move the air returns in the old heating vent holes. So my plan is to just redo the floors later down the road and have it all carry from living room, to dining and into the short, hallway you can see in one photo. Then carpet in the bedrooms.

What I am wondering is, - Is the arch dated? Should I change that to some kind of moulding? I'd like to keep the house some what classic, but at the same time update it. What color paint? If I leave the Arch and there is no trim to separate the room I'll probably have to paint the dining and licing room the same color. I was thinking light beige?

The living room has no lights in it. So no idea what to do for lighting. Above the fireplace you can see two sconces were removed. They were up stairs in the bonus room and match the chandelier in the dining room. The chandelier is really nice and looks great, but the sconces that match are a little over stated for just two small light fixtures if that makes sense. So maybe recessed lighting and then a couple of sconces ran to their own switch for when I want low light and the recessed on a different switch for more light?

And the gas fireplace - No idea what to do with it. This is Tulsa so it has two very art deco accents which were big for the time of the home. It has the gas line ran, but no insert.

Where should I start design wise? Thanks for reading. I have included pictures of different angles. I forgot to mention the four sets of twin double hung windows. I am going to replace them with Marvin windows and replace the pulleys and sash chord. Marvin has pulley and chain windows with weighted sash. I really do like the window trim and thick base board trim. I will keep some of the original windows since they are original to the house and reglaze them. I'll hang at least one some where as a frame.

No idea how to lay our furniture either. Was thinking two matching chairs in the corners on the wall next to the arch. Meaning one chair in each corner at an angle a bit.

Thanks again.