Is another living room the greatest need you have in your house? Will it be for the kids to hang out in? Or a quieter adult retreat? We turned our dining room into a home office with matching desks facing each other placed in the middle of the room, so together they are about the same size as a dining table. It looks like it might be large enough to fit a modestly sized sofa in there, with a small round table with 2-4 chairs that you could use as a gaming table. Any musicians? What about a music room?

@Beth H et al.. yes, and I'm really thrilled with all of the recommendations, everyone has style and it's great to see varying opinions. So I don't want to think anyone has wasted their time, I think down the road in the near future, we will go with something built out pretty much like you were suggesting early on. As we just finished the remodel within the last year, we are not up for building anything out or even tiling the wall at this point. We don't need new furniture at the moment (kids will ruin it anyway). For now, we were looking for something minor / superficial, if that's the correct verbiage. While we know now, that it may not look "perfect", it's where we're at now. That said, we don't want to do anything (now) with the fireplace, what we are open to is: some type of shelving (which would have to be shallow in depth, I think), definitely plants (faux preferably), artwork or like I mentioned (which may have gotten lost), is maybe B&W canvas print collage (I'm a part-time photographer and we have zero photos of our kids displayed). We are also open to putting a small corner piece to the left side, but it would have to be very small footprint as we only have about 12" from the wall to the lightswitch near the slider, but after hearing/seeing some of the plant options, I think we prefer that. Another note, we (I) have a floor subwoofer to the right hand side, you can see my wife's aerogarden sitting on top of it until we find a home for it :) Hopefully, that helps, again, I really do appreciate everyone weighing in and taking a lot of time for the mock ups. -Matt

Maybe, push peninsula even further back to give more space within. keep chairs with people out of walk way. need panel on right side of microwave hood. Keep same spacing on both sides of window to keep balanced symmetry around window. Stoves that close to corner is not ideal. make sure fillers in corner are wide enough so drawers don't hit handles

The house faces SSW,, lot size is just under half an acre of flat land. Honestly, on 1/2 acre I think you could do a heck of a lot better. Have you considered contacting someone like architectrunnerguy who could help you create a plan that would work better for your retirement years and also work for your husband? While the suggestions here (especially Mama's) would be improvements, I do feel you could do a lot better. One of the other problems is the house faces SSW which means you're not taking good advantage of passive solar heating/cooling. Ideally you want your main rooms facing south and you want to reduce windows on the west side of a house. The way your house is situated the garage and two front bedrooms get the best light.