HAhaHaah. That was funny, i had to goto the top of the thred to make sure, cause i thought it was scraggy all along.

Okay first off WHY THE F' are you're completely flat with no round walls, nurbs!?!? Doesn't make any sense to me. Its okay to be infatuated with how sexy those curves are, but you have to learn that even the basic polies have alot of use in some circumstance. I would suggest replacing (at least) the wall on the fireplace side with a poly plane and then making a cut or two and just extruding a face for the fireplace. Then you can lay out the uvs for texturing that part. You're probably gonna need to replace that texture, because i think the texture is just too small (the resolution). For photorealistic maya work you need TONS of high res textures to really make everything look good.

Now it seems to me that you're scene is too dark where its important, and too bright where we don't care. I definately think the floor need to be brighter, whether it need some more diffuse, or just brighten up the colour source. What did the tutorial say that the other lights were representing? I Feel like they are coming out of nowhere. Also you're lamp could lose some red tones and be closer to a yellow. Maybe it coul be brighter too? Make an update and i'd be happy to give you some more feedback from there.