The Living Room
The floorplan shows the "after" version following all of my renovations.
I planned from the get-go to turn the living room walls into a lush forest. Although I could have had a custom mural made from an image of the view, I chose not to because it would make me homesick. Amazon's product photo sold me on this one instantly:
The prior owner hung his television almost up against the ceiling; he also installed a recessed outlet behind it to eliminate visible wires, in this case a virtual necessity due to a nick-knack shelf located smack in the center of the wall, directly under the TV.
It's quite bizarre the lengths to which the prior owner went in order to install that recessed outlet. Instead of tapping into one of the two existing outlets on the same wall, he tapped into an outlet in the laundry room, and ran the line through surface molding around two walls of the laundry to a blank outlet box near the floor. From there he tucked it behind a cable box in the living room and ran it up the wall to the television. It took me a good two hours to dismantle this wacko arrangement.
I tore out everything I could from the wall, including the recessed outlet, nick-knack shelf, two other outlets, and a cable outlet. I couldn't move the hall light switch, so I replaced it with a brown switch to blend into the mural better—the original white switch would have stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.
As for my television, it would be down at eye-level where it belongs. Also, rather than stack all of the A/V equipment under the TV, as almost everyone does, I'd locate it along the side wall so as to reduce the visual clutter on the TV wall. And I didn't bother with a recessed outlet or anything of the kind; the distance was too short to worry about.
To complete the space, I built the little coffee table using the same approach as the dining room table: a piece of butcherblock countertop with inexpensive legs from Amazon.
Later, I added lights under the coffee table. They provide just enough illumination to navigate around the living room in the dark without shining on the television. They're also battery-powered so as to avoid having any unsightly wires on which to trip.
The very last little detail added to the living room was trim around the mural. I'd used a laser level to install the mural, so I know it's straight and square. Yet owing to the totally wonky nature of the trailer, the top of the mural was nearly two inches lower on one end (well, actually, the ceiling was nearly two inches higher on one end). So, I hid the discrepancy with trim (below), which also gave the mural a more finished appearance.
I was going to add track lighting along the top of the mural, but ultimately decided this wouldn't be worth the cost.