Mixing Things Up

We’re rearranging the living room because we are having nine guests over for dinner this weekend. That may be normal for some of y’all, but finding room for eleven is a bit tough for our space. With the current set-up, our dining area was just way too crowded. Due to a limited amount of time, I opted to clean up the living room and to focus on the dining area later this week.  Here’s the change.

At first I hated it. I thought it looked really dumb, but didn’t have the energy to move all of that furniture back. Now, it’s actually growing on me. Peter and I ate dinner on the couch (like we do every night) and it was nice not be staring at the TV. I like that we’ll be able to put the appetizers on the hutch and that guests will be able to move into the dining area as the night progresses. Here’s a less pretty, but fuller photo so that you can soak in everything that’s going on.

And here’s a photo of the usual set-up, so that you can compare.

This temporary way doesn’t allow the couch to be centered with the window, which is driving me a little bonkers, but it’s a fun switch for now.

Coffee Table Search

Years ago I lived with my brother, David, in his sweet little bungalow.  At the time, I wasn’t all that into decorating. I was used to the college schedule of moving every 3 to 9 months and never really understood the effort of setting up a more permanent home. I was confused. Most of my decorating attempts included the use of hot pink and black. Again, I was confused.

Shortly before I moved out of David’s house he made a decision that irked me to my core: he got rid of the coffee table. It was quite the disagreement between the two of us. He thought it took up too much space. I thought he shouldn’t get rid of it until he had picked out another one.

Last week (over two years later) he called me and asked me to check some links that he had emailed me. He was buying a new coffee table and needed advice. He sounded miserable. I was ecstatic. We went through proper ratios and talked about potential tables and eventually, I offered to accompany  him on his search. So, this weekend he and I spent a solid three hours going from store to store looking for coffee tables. In boy time three hours is an eternity, especially when you’re dong something like looking at coffee tables. In the end, we found something that we both really liked.

{Both via}

He and Peter go pick it up on Friday. I’m probably more excited than he is. (Although, don’t get me wrong, David REALLY loves this new coffee table.) The best part is that now he’s going to let me help him pick out curtains, take down the UT flag hanging over his window, hang pictures on the wall, and maybe—just maybe–get  a rug! It’s all quite heavenly. I snapped a couple of pictures of his living room with my phone while I was there. Next time I’ll try to remember to bring my camera so that you guys can get the full effect.

(The line on the floor is just the way that the light is coming in.)

Anyone have any suggestions that I should spring on him? His goal is homey.

Living Room Before and After

Before Peter and I moved in together, I read a lot of articles about difficulties that many couples face when trying to merge their decorating styles. So when I moved in I waited and waited until eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed our place to feel like a home. We decided to pick one room and focus our efforts on making it feel livable. We’ve had some detours along the way but I can finally say that it’s finished, or at least as finished as a room can ever be.

Last night while looking back on the before photo, Peter exclaimed, “How did you even live here?!” The funny thing is that he lived here for three years like this before I ever moved in, except without the TV or the coffee table. It was really bare.

(Sorry, I forgot to straighten out the cover on the chair before I took this photo.)

I would love to add a rug but, unfortunately, one of our dogs can’t control his bladder when he gets excited. We love him anyway.

You can read more about what we did here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.  *Deep Breath* On to the next room.

Let’s Start with Curtains

Last night Peter posted about his hate/hate relationship with our couch. What he didn’t mention was that when Peter and I first met this condo was eerily empty. Imagine yesterday’s photo with no TV and no coffee table to collect clutter. This was the way I was first introduced to it. One would think that having studied art for 14 years that the boy would hang SOMETHING on the walls, but no, it was completely empty. I moved in with one semester left of college. I didn’t know how long I would be here because I didn’t know where I would end up getting a job and so I didn’t want to “waste time” decorating. We hung a few things here and there until finally I realized that no matter how short a period of time I spent living here, I needed it to feel home-ier.

We decided to start with the living room because since we don’t have an entry way this is the first room that guests see when they walk into our home. For a long time we focused our frustration on the biggest (and pretty much only) item in the room–our couch. I yearned for one of those beautiful cream couches that would grace the covers of fabulous design magazines like Domino. Finally, with not enough money in my bank account for a new couch (and two black dogs who would’ve covered the couch with their fur) I let my focus leave the couch and decided to start somewhere. We opted for curtains.

A short trip to both Ikea and Target only set us back about $40 and suddenly we had curtains and curtain rods for the room. We opted for the type of curtain that you can hem with an iron. It was super easy and it was the first step to making our house a home.

Here is the condo post curtains. What do you think?

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Living with the Couch

We began redecorating with considerations of what we needed to remove from the house. Foremost on the list was a chocolate brown couch (c. 1982) that has a wide rib corduroy type texture. Imagine the worst pants you have ever seen. Then, imagine those pants as a couch and you get the basic idea of what we had before us. I have a hate-hate relationship with this sofa from long before I met my lovely fiancé. It was a gift (read: cast-off) from my grandparents and traveled with me from Chicago to Austin in a U-Haul which repeatedly broke down between point A and B. The truck finally died outside Oklahoma City, requiring my father and me to transfer the sofa from one truck to another, along with the rest of my worldly possessions.
The couch weighs as much as a Buick. It comes from those halcyon, pre-Ikea days when furniture was made from steel and little else, like a Detroit muscle car. Lifting this sofa a handful of times gave me pain I have not felt before or since. It almost crippled my father, who has an already delicate frame caused by drunkenly carrying a boat motor through the woods in the Canadian wilderness (but that’s another story). The couch has gone from two separate apartments to the condo, where it now rests in the sitting room. Having long since lost the casters that served as feet, it rests on a couple of two-by-fours like a broken down car.

Given this history, I was only too ready to sell this monstrosity or delight in tearing it apart and tossing the pieces in the dumpster. But the only couches we really liked were from places with price tags better suited to Sotheby’s than bourgeois home stores. We did, however, possess sufficient funds for an alternative project. Gradually, we added to or modified the contents of the room in a way that embraced this once hated piece of furniture and made it the veritable centerpiece of our plan for revamping our space. This embrace of a repulsive object allowed us to expand our imaginations and craft sensibilities into creating something that steered away from the overdone, catalog photo living area and into something that was collectively fashioned, rather than purchased readymade. At least, that is what we have decided to tell ourselves, but our additions have certainly helped. More importantly, it is surprising to realize the sheer joy in creating by hand certain additions to a space that one could buy.

Here is the entire room, including the couch, before we started the decorating process. Stop by tomorrow for more on the living room decorating.

Have you ever had a piece of furniture that you had to decorate around? If so, tell us about it.