Baby Birthday Ticker Ticker

Monday, July 1, 2013

Our Living Room

We bought our house four years ago. We didn't do much to decorate. Almost ALL OF our furniture has been hand me downs.  We have bought things little by little, but honestly, neither one of us are decorators or enjoy it much.  I like a clean home for sure. My house is almost always spotless, but pretty? Not really. Furniture can be expensive, so I always just avoid it. I know many people find GREAT pieces 2nd hand on Craigslist or yard sales- I have found some pieces that way that I LOVE, but I don't have the patience to do that all the time. The shelve in Anika's room is one of my favorite pieces and we got it from CL for $30.
Then, there always seems like other things that we need buy- new washer and dryer, new roof, new car, etc. Or, we spent a large amount of money to go to NZ this past year for almost a month. That wiped out our savings. Everyone likes to spend money in a different way- buying furniture is not our "Thing"  however we have paid off almost 30% of our house in just over 4 years, so it may not be nicely decorated, but it is a lot more OURS!!
We also are not home THAT much, so we don't get to sit around and realize how ugly everything is :)
 
 We have been fixing our living room little by little.
I have pulled together some photos from the past 4 years to show you.
Above was right after we moved in. That green couch was given to us and it served us well. It has a matching big chair and ottoman. The girl in photo is my friend A who passed away from cancer when I was 10 weeks pregnant with Anika.  She sure is missed.
 
 

Anika's first day home


We have a wood stove in the living room. It takes up a LOT of space. Especially when in use 6 months out of the year.  Andrew used that plastic blue thing to bring wood in from outside, but we did get a proper wood box a few years ago not shown in any photos. We have to have a wood box and a big safety gate around it now that we have a kid.  This chair above and below was also given to us,  by my college roommate's mom. It gets sat in a lot.  And the fabric has been getting VERY worn the past year. I look at it and cringe. It just doesn't look nice. I have wanted to reupholster it or get rid of it for a while. It is now in our basement because ONE DAY Andrew wants to get it reupholstered :)

 

This friend is sitting in the chair that matches the couch. Piri ruined the back of it a long time ago by sitting on it to look out the window.  She flattened the back cushion and IT was COVERED in her hair and there was no way to get her hair off it. A few months ago, I shoved it out our front door and took it to the dump.  And, my eye was on the couch next. I was OVER it. The cushions always fall off. I just grew to hate it more and  more.


Andrew's chair that he wore the fabric right off. This is him feeding Anika her FRIST bottle I had just pumped :) He had probably just come in from getting fire wood dressed like that.


Trin and Anika 4th of July 2 years ago in the big ugly chair near the window.


Anika and her twin cousins on the couch.


And this is bad. LOOK AT That TV area behind Anika. That "Stand" was a desk from my college apartment! ha.  The wires showing under it DROVE ME NUTS!  We did replace that with a proper stand over a year ago, so that was nice! You can also see ottoman here. That ottoman was nice because I used it to block area to stairs when Anika was little. Never had to get a gate for the bottom of the stairs.

The one thing we did do pretty early on was get custom dark wood blinds for the windows, so we did that at least. But, Andrew only wanted blinds, not curtains


This shows the TV stand in the corner.  A couple  months ago we moved that to the other side of the room and moved couch to get an idea if we could get a new Couch and Love seat.  We started shopping on Mother's Day weekend!! We actually bought a couch and love seat and went home and taped out our area to see what kind of space it would take up. We discovered what we bought was going to be WAYYYYY too big for the space, so we had to call and cancel. We went back out shopping the next day- of course all the stores are over an hour away. We also started training Piri to stay off the couch :)  We didn't want her to ruin another couch, especially one we were spending a lot on.
When we found the couch and love seat we wanted, we found out we could not have them delivered for a WHOLE MONTH! I was so bummed, but then I realized we kind of needed a month to get Piri used to the new rules.  Her nails are SOO long no matter how much we cut them.

During the month, my mom made curtains for us and I bought some floor lamps (the one above is a cheapo for the Christmas Tree shop and we replaced that). This room has NO ceiling lights, so we need the lamps.  The chairs on couch were keeping Piri off :) 
Andrew HATES curtains. He said they are so American and he was SO against them. He was SOO against them to the point that it was comical. I went ahead anyway and looked at fabric with my friends. I had lots of input.  He said they blocked his sunlight when the blinds were open.
I still made him hang the curtain rod and told him if he really hated them, I would take them down.

Pre curtains and New Couches above.
AND here is THE New Living ROOM!  New Curtains- which Andrew scrunches ALL THE WAY to the sides when he is home.  We started out with the couch pushed over into the corner so Piri's ottoman could be under the window. She is a watch dog- she needs to see what is going on outside, so blocking this window from her is tough.  We also couldn't take away her ONE spot left- the ottoman, so we have to keep that for now. Its functional for Piri, not pretty.  Also, come November, we will have a huge safety gate around the wood stove, so we need to keep couch back.

Tv on other side of the room.

People say we need a coffee table and area rug. I think we will get some small end tables for the sides of couches to put drinks on and stuff.  We actually have a bunch of Ash wood we cut down from our yard that my dad has dried out, and we can lay down as wood floors. We just need to move out for a few days and pay someone to do it :)  The off white wall you see is Tin. That is a safety feature for the wood stove.  The wood stove really dominates the room, but its so much more efficient to heat this way living in NH!  We LOVE the couches. I sit on the big one and Andrew sits on the love seat :)  I have found dog hair on the new couches a couple times, but hopefully not for long. They are real leather and if she rips them I will be sick. Just sick over it.  These are pretty much our first big furniture purchase. We did buy Anika's crib, dresser, guest room mattress,  and our bed mattress new! haha.
 
SO, there you have it -our improved living room. Still not perfect and pretty, but SUCH an improvement don't you think?

4 comments:

  1. It is! I do like the wooden chair. Get it recover. It can't cost much and then put it near the stove!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks GREAT! I had those dark wood blinds in the condo I own and lived in before marriage. I really like the looks of them.
    And, I'm glad you pushed Andrew on curtains. They make such a HUGE difference! Not sure if you ever saw this post about our curtain drama!
    Major makeover.
    http://deewallaceadventures.blogspot.com/2012/03/difference-drapes-can-make.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Looks a lot better! I think even if you do wood floors a rug would be good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It looks great and I love wood heat. It's so warm.

    ReplyDelete