So, I am taking the whole decorating thing one room at a time. I'm doing that for 2 reasons: 1-so I don't go crazy and 2- we have to budget as we go since we don't have a billion dollars in our "decorating" account. I imagine people with money have an account just for decorating. I might consider it if I were in their shoes. I know "time is money" but I don't have money...I have time, so that's what I am using. :) Don't worry, this isn't the finished product, this is just where we are right now.
If you can remember from our last place, we have a brown leather couch, which I love for all of it's practical purposes (like dog hair and spills), but I really wanted to lighten up the space we have since it isn't a super huge room. So.....I put a slip cover on my leather couch. Who says you can't do that? And even if you found the guy who says that....who cares? I've been a rule-breaker my whole life anyway. :) Take note of the curtains. Got the fabric for $11 and made those bad boys myself. Just used some no-sew hemming tape and my handy iron.
I found the white table on the right at a garage sale. It was yellow so my wonderful husband painted it white for me. The black tables on the left side (which you can't see in the pictures) are from T.J. Maxx. There are actually two tables. A smaller one fits right under the big one and we can pull it out when we need it and put it right back when we aren't using it. Beautiful. Snagged both tables for $50.
The large black table in the center of the room, aka the "coffee table" (I don't drink coffee so I need to find another name to start a trend for the non-coffee drinkers) was a craigslist buy. Got the table for $30 and my lovely husband sanded it and repainted it for us.
Don't freak out about the brown leather recliner. I am very aware that this doesn't match, but I am patiently waiting for a solution to come to mind. I may end up having to make my own slip cover that can still function on a recliner. How? I have no idea yet.
The red table under the TV is one of my favorites. Just ignore the guest room in the backroom. It currently serves as our storage room for things we still have to find a place for. Moving on....I had been eying a Pottery Barn table for almost 6 months, but it never went on sale. So, I started looking online for a look-alike. No luck. I really wanted something that had separate places for the the DVR and DVD player, but I wanted something that resembled a table. Not an easy find. After many weeks of searching I finally found one online and a store about 2 miles from us carried it. BUT, they didn't have the price listed so I had no idea if it was any cheaper than the Pottery Barn table I adored. Off we went to find out. As the salesperson was checking on that, we plopped down on one of the couches in a "living room" they had set up. We both noticed the table that would be our Plan B....the red one that you see now. The first table we loved ended up being over $1,000 which is not even close to being feasible. Luckily Patrick pulled out some Dave Ramsey techniques and haggled them down to almost half the asking price. Heck Yes!
I still have plenty on my to-do list for the living room. I have to figure out what I am going to do with the top of the red table, get a couple of ladder bookshelves for the corner behind the recliner and put some pictures in our new, white picture frames I got on clearance at T.J. Maxx. One question: Do the pictures I have hanging on the wall leading into the kitchen look too high? I feel like they need to come down a tad, but don't really want to go through the hassle of re-hanging unless I have to. Thoughts?? Do they look awkwardly high enough for me to hang them all over again??
