Living Room Transformation: Part I

When we purchased our home, I would estimate that we loved about 75% of everything that the house featured. I was fully aware that when we were searching for a house we wouldn't find one that met every specification or want we had on our list. If we wanted that, we'd have to build and we didn't have the money for that nor did we want to go that far out of the city. And let's be honest - I would have been able to complain about a brand new house too. I've really developed that skill into an art form in my 26 years.

Many of the things we loved included updated floors, kitchen and bathroom counters, and most of all, the floorplan. Our living room is in the middle of the house and is incredibly open and airy. The former owners however had absolutely NO TASTE and decided a dijon mustard with a hint of baby shit green would go beautifully with the naturally red undertones of the brick fireplace and hardwood floors. See exhibit A:

I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

On top of that, they were simply incapable, awful painters. See exhibit B:

Repainting the living room (and the freshly painted avocado green dining room) were definitely number one on our priority list when we moved in. However it's difficult to find manual laborers who will take credit card as payment, so we had to wait until we had saved enough liquid cash to paint. Which means I felt like I was living in a baby's diaper for the first four months we lived in our house.

BUT! HAZZAH! one day in November we realized we had saved enough money. So we had our living room, dining room, and entryway painted. See exhibit C:

I no longer felt like I lived in a jar of Grey Poupon! Unfortunately while our walls looked beautiful, our furniture did not. The hand-me-down sofa and chair/ottoman with baby formula stains (we do not have children) and the TV stand from college lacked style. Not that two accountants have much style. But we like to pretend.

So we began the quest for living room furniture. The quest that would result in frustrations and a few arguments. Our shopping excursions actually began long before our living room was painted which is probably why if felt like it took months. Because it actually did. But once we had that fresh coat of paint we got SUPER! SERIOUS!

I think we had so many difficulties for primarily two reasons: 1) we have only one solid wall in the room against which the TV would be placed and 2) Matt is a mammoth beast requiring a long couch. Exhibit D (some of my friends say he looks like Mr. Incredible. Yes, the cartoon character):

With the help of a lovely woman at Ethan Allen, we finally settled on this number:

We are thrilled with our purchase and are looking forward to our additional throw pillows coming in.

I also struggled with the purchase of a TV stand that would match a coffee table and an end table. I know that some people might find all matching incredibly boring, but I have to indulge the OCD in me. We finally settled upon this collection from Haverty's. The lovely woman at Ethan Allen might not be pleased. But we are:

Yes, I realize there is no rug, our furniture is on no scratch pads, and the walls are blank. We're working on it. And at the rate we're going, we should have wall hangings sometime in July.