Wow. I'm glad I did the "thankful" posts during November or you wouldn't have heard from me at all!
How about an update on the living room?
If you'll remember from my
last post about it, Emily (from GoHausGo and a dear friend) had come up with
an amazing plan for our living room to take us from "dorm room chic" to "we're married and grown-up."
As a reminder, here was our "Before."
Photo credit to Brad, who emailed it to Emily for our plan.
The image originally appeared on her blog, linked above.
Pretty boring, huh? I'd had that orange couch a couple of years (thank you, Urban Outfitters) because I'd grown disgusted with boring white walls. I needed color. In a previous apartment, I had that couch, a green rug, and a six-foot plywood buffalo "shadow" hanging on the wall. I'm a bit of an odd bird.
Our first step from Emily's plan was to paint. We taped up bits of paint to the walls and hemmed and hawed. We both wanted a light gray, but Brad wanted to be sure that it wouldn't look too blue and that it would be light enough that we wouldn't need to prime it before moving out.
We ended up choosing the sample on the left, which is actually a beige color that magically shows up light gray on our walls. Brad invited his parents over for a painting party and breakfast-for-dinner. I made eggs, the boys got out the painting stuff, and his mom and I went to look at fabric for curtains.
My father-in-law. I told him this picture would feature
on the blog and I'm not sure he was as excited as I was.
It's hard to see in the above picture, but if you look by the ladder, you can see the light gray going up on the walls. It dried a smidge darker than it appears and is such a subtle change, but I love it. Brad is fond of it, too.
Anyway, after the painting came the couch. We had factored it in the budget for November, but it certainly didn't hurt that Ikea was running a promotion where you received a gift card for 15% of the purchase price of a sofa when you purchased your sofa. $900 sofa = $135 gift card towards bedroom furniture, odds and ends, cinnamon rolls, etc. Done and done.
We invited my brother over for lasagna and wrangled him into helping us put the couch together. I LOVE assembling furniture. Seriously, if I weren't a school psychologist, I would want to work for Ikea assembling peoples' furniture.
Five humongous boxes containing our new sofa.
Getting all the pieces unloaded.
Poor, poor Karlstad
Tragedy struck when we were unloading the third box. We noticed that a back support piece was badly damaged (as pictured above). I quickly called Ikea and they informed me that I just needed to bring in the broken piece and they would hand me a replacement. I had time the next day and took care of it. Crisis solved!
Men at Work.
The boys did most of the sofa set up while I finished up dinner and it was so lovely to watch it come together! They assembled as much of it as they could with the one piece being broken.
Enjoying the fruits of their labor.
You can see in the (somewhat creepy) photo above where the other half of the couch is ready to hook on. It was a little sad looking, but I was so excited that we had at least half of our couch ready to go. True to my word, I went to Ikea the next day, picked up the piece, and Brad and I finished assembling our couch. Here's a photo that Emily snapped of us and our amazing ability to sit so far apart from each other.
We can both sleep on the couch without touching
the arms of the couch or each other.
With the couch in place, I went to work on the other items. I ordered the orange stool from Crate and Barrel (it looks great!) and Mom and I went out for lamps.
Sadly, this is not the lamp I bought.
Here's the lamp I bought. Mom is holding it up for size
reference as we tried to find a suitable lampshade.
With the lamp purchased, Mom and I made another Ikea run. I scored our nightstands, a lampshade, curtains, and drinking straws and only spent $20 after using the gift card. I had plans of painting the lamp orange and either leaving the shade white or painting it a light gray, but Emily let me know yesterday that she has an orange lamp shade for me. So now, I don't know what to do with the lamp. The curtains with be striped orange and Mom scored some amazing curtain rods at JoAnn's for 40% off + an additional 25% off. She rocks. Brad and I now need to set up our Christmas tree, complete some of these DIY projects, and pick out wedding photos and frames for the wall over the couch. Oh, and sell the orange couch. I've had three buyers back out before they even saw it's gorgeousness, but I have a former co-worker who wants it this weekend. I'm eager to no longer be in the land of couches.
So, there it is. What are your thoughts? Anyone know an amazing place to get unique, cost-effective frames? I'm thinking a lot of rectangles with a couple ovals thrown in.
--Melanie
