Beautiful space! You have great architecture and great light to work with!

There is room for opportunity with scale here. Your space is quite large so eliminating a lot of the smaller individual pieces and replacing them with larger ones will help to balance the space and create cohesion.

What would help to pull this space together is a large area rug- which your pups will LOVE- and some complimentary larger scaled furniture pieces. The large white chair you have is perfect so if you can find another like it, two of those and a coffee table upon a rug in front of your bay window would be a great start.

Building a little more around the crate to disguise it as more of a furniture piece or, if your are open to it, it looks like it would fit nicely in the corner where the low white cabinet is. That location would draw a little less focus to it and help to highlight the architectural interest of your room.

A stone veneer on the fireplace would help to update it, pulling it away from the traditional style you are not a fan of.

The room could use some height as far as the furniture goes. The recommendation would be to replace the brown dresser with a tall cabinet or a built in on either side of the fireplace- closed cabinets at the bottom and open upper shelving would create a refined look with all of the function of storage! Here's an idea for the seating:

And for a cabinet:

Best of luck with your project!!

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Many thanks to both of you for your suggestions. I used to have a rug in there, but haven't had anything for a while. You're right. I'm sure that would help.

I actually have two of those white chairs. They have gotten to the point where they need new slip covers or I need new chairs. The red chair was my grandmother's. I keep moving it around trying to find a good home for it.

What do you think about the piano in the room? I have another room I can move it to. I really like the suggestion about moving the white cabinet and putting the dog crate there. I just built the shelf over the dog crate, but I can unbuild it too.

I used to have a large cabinet on one side of the fireplace, but it always looked lopsided. I have builtins surrounding a fireplace in the next room too, so I don't really need the storage. But I love those cabinets you showed from Crate and Barrel. Do you think one on each side? Would built-ins be something to consider? I'm also open to tearing off the mantle and starting over.

It is a lovely space, and my first thought was also a rug, making it large enough to fit this whole space. Too small and the whole room looks small. Your nice picture over the fireplace needs to go somewhere else. For this space you need something that is longer and not as tall. By all means relocate the dog crate and do away with the wall art and the shelf over the chest and, well, basically everything. You need large pieces to make an impact in these spaces, perhaps two smaller paintings, one on top of the other, to balance the larger one over the fireplace. I can't imagine tearing out a perfectly good fireplace, but then I'm more traditional and therefore like it. Beautiful doggie!

Two of those Crate & Barrel cabinets versus built-ins gives you more versatility, say, if you decide you want to split them up one day or want to use them in a different space in your home. You could do just one of the cabinets and then add to your shelves on the opposite side. Perhaps 2 shelves above and one below the shelf you built above the dog crate and stain them a similar color to the cabinet. This way you will create balance AND get to keep your shelf!

The mantel helps tie in some of the other traditional elements in the space such as the bay window and crown molding so there is no need to dismantle it, however, if it really bugs you, a floating mantel would look great and update the fireplace even further.

The piano works quite nicely where it is but if there is another room for the piano, the recommendation is to move it. It is a more traditional piece so to pull it from this room will help to update and refresh your entry.

Hope this helps!