Apartment Tour: Living Room

Someday, I hope to live in a world where none of our furniture is from Ikea. Don’t get me wrong: I love their designs and I love their prices, I’m just at the point in my life where furniture disassembly and assembly is not fun anymore. (Was it ever?) And our furniture is at the point where every reassembly is a frightening experiment in the longevity of cheap plywood, in addition to a rousing, unfun game of "Find the Pegs!"

Maybe I should stop moving three times in one year. That might help.

Regardless and without further adieu, let me present to you, our not-sponsored-by-Ikea-but-you'd-never-know-it living room. It is XX square feet of wood floored goodness, complete with plantation shutters that make my world go round, all the midday sun you could ever want, and nary a suspended ceiling in sight. It’s like I died and went to apartment heaven. (Who knew it was in NOVA?)

The shutters, wonderful as they are, present a bit of a design problem, because anything that goes against that wall must be lower than the sills. Originally, I wanted our couch to back to the windows, but it was too tall. So the chaise section ended up that way instead. (I can still drink my morning coffee in the sun, which is all that really matters. That dent in the pillow is from me! ;)

Our TV sideboard is actually my dresser. Our bedroom is too small for two dressers, so mine was exiled because Mr. C’s is smaller. So now we share both dressers: the ‘essentials’ go in the bedroom and everything else goes out here. Not the best-case scenario – Watch out, visitors! ;) – but it works. We also commandeered a drawer for DVDs, which was a convenient way to get them out of sight. (See the missing board at the lower left? The victim of one move too many!)

And this is…another sideboard-shelf-thingamajig. The front door opens in between the living room and the dining room, so I always imagined this as a kind of ‘landing zone,’ but right now it’s just an extra place to put stuff. The metal pole is from the previous occupant - I think it's for hanging tapestries? It will be coming down as soon as I'm in the mood for a little touch up painting.

Future plans? I’d love to get a couple of round rugs to overlap in the room – an 8’ diameter to go under the couch and something smaller to go closer to the front door – but as eight footers are kind of ridiculously expensive, those might be a while. A set of matching lamps on either side of the above mirror might be nice too.

I wanted to hang a few floating shelves above the TV, but when I checked them out at Target and saw the evil-looking “cleats” used to hang them, I totally chickened out. Our landlord in PA reamed us on our security deposit even though we spackled, sanded, and generally left things better than we found them, so I’m a little wary of crazy holes in the walls right now. Do you have any other ideas?

And this little table…is my arch nemesis. What is it about Lack tables that just scream “I’m in a college dorm room!!!” We had two of them when we moved, but I’ve already managed to Goodwill one of them due to “lack of space.” I’ve got my eye on this end table as a replacement. I love the warm industrial look and Mr. C could use it for his laptop when he works at home. And it’s even on sale right now… Hm, hm, hmm… ;)