Living Room, 5 years In!

I’ve realized lately that I tend to blog about a room once it’s renovated, and then I kind of move on. I guess I feel like…how many times does anyone possibly want to look at the same room, just a little altered from last time we looked at the room? I never feel like a room is finished because I move stuff around ALL THE DAMN TIME for shits and giggles, and then posting about it feels so…self-indulgent? Unimportant? And then years go by and the room actually does look TOTALLY different than it did before, and then I feel a little regretful that entire iterations of the space have gone undocumented in the meantime. The public must know. For the purpose of…I don’t know, this is a blog and that is what we do here.

Which leads us to my living room, which regularly ends up as the victim of my late-night puttering. And the last time I felt inclined to write a blog post about it was OVER THREE YEARS AGO! Oopsie! We have some catching up to do!

Back when I bought the house, the living room looked like this!

A couple years later, it looked like this! Let’s take a moment to appreciate and mourn the extreme cuteness and specialness that was Linus. I miss that dog so fucking much.

Today, it’s more like this! I didn’t consult my old pictures before taking new pictures, so APOLOGIES for the inconsistent angles. I didn’t ask Mekko (or Linus, who did not take direction) to pose for pictures—she does that on her own free will—so, I don’t know, do we feel weirded out she chose the same spot? It’s like she…is trying to tell me…something. (She isn’t; she’s a dog.)

So some things have changed and some have not changed. My dumb little bench is still my coffee table, which really just goes to show how utterly impossible it is to find a good coffee table. I MEAN MY GOD. All the ones that are right in most ways are still so wrong in other ways I fear I will die before the culture at large figures this mess out.

I got that painting a couple weeks ago from a local consignment place. I had this idea that I’d paint the frame but instead I got home and immediately just put it up and so far have not addressed it further. It appears to be signed S. Eagle in the bottom right corner. Seagull?

Also, the sofa is new! And by new, I mean no longer really new, but I guess making its big blog debut? Just in time for me to WANT IT OUT OF MY HOUSE RIGHT NOW? Fancy that! So this is the IKEA NOCKEBY 3-seater, which I found in the As-Is section at IKEA around 3 years ago for something stupid, like $200. I didn’t like the legs so I swapped them for these Pretty Pegs, which this couch isn’t really made to do but I made it work. I’ll spare you the DIY tutorial but it involves extra screws and additional support and it’s just not that interesting. Anyway. The NOCKEBY is in most ways a good sofa, but I’m not allowed to own a sofa that isn’t going to also serve as a luxury dog bed. This sofa has a limited selection of slipcovers, and this one (which may now be discontinued?) is TERRIBLE when forced to interact with either dog hair or dog nails. TERRIBLE. Of course it can be taken off and washed, but with IKEA couches that’s actually kind of a production, and it doesn’t wash well, and I just do not like it at all.

This lead me to purchasing a SECOND, DIFFERENT slipcover, which had a tighter weave, and that was SOMEHOW EVEN WORSE. After trying every stain removal method I could imagine, I could never get the thing clean and I eventually threw it away.

SO now I’m at this dumb crossroads of either buying yet another slipcover ($$) for this so-so cheap sofa I performed some light hackery on, or getting this menace out of my life and buying a new leather sofa ($$$). I suppose I could also just put the original black/chrome sofa back, since I still have it, and it IS leather, but I didn’t like it in here either so I’m not sure that’s an improvement.

I think I just need a different sofa.

Let me think about it for another three to five years.

The rug is also new! But not new-new. I got it at auction and I like it! The colors and the pattern are so bright and bold and fun. Which is also me saying: I have not taken the time to learn anything about the origins of this rug, but it is a nice rug that was $300 and the main color is mustard and I’m into it.

2013! Those walls were wild, man.

2015.

So this looks like that now, you get it. More stuff on the mantel. Less big scary lady. Bertoia wire chair from yore still hangin out.

Ya know, I feel like I pulled this faux fireplace project off.

The arts above the fireplace are by Gregory Gummersall. On the mantel are stuff and things. We have vintage studio pottery. We have my dead dog’s collar. We have 2 Dala horses. We have my precious lamp. We have some antique crocks.

WE HAVE THIS BANANAS CRYSTAL I paid $5 for at a garage sale recently. I’m not, like, a ~crystal person~ but I’m totally a crystal person. Also, Dala horse butts are so cute.

This is 2015. This wall has always been tricky. I’ve since moved the piano. I have NO IDEA what to do with the piano. It’s HUGE and in reality, there are exactly 3 walls on the main floor that can fit it. I do not play piano. I do not have any desire to learn how to play the piano. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to know how to play the piano, but I do not see myself trying to learn that of all things in the foreseeable future. Shower/car singing is my only real musical passion. But I have this huge piano that came with my home, because the man who lived in it FROM AGE SEVEN TO NINETY-TWO was the lead organist at the Old Dutch Church and taught piano lessons out of this very house during the Depression and, like, the war and shit and who the hell am I to put his piano on fucking Facebook Marketplace?

It’s a real problem.

Also I got a nice bench that matches it pretty perfectly. And then I moved them both into the hoard room of doom.

So, in a fit of I-don’t-know-what, I made this situation all by myself and I call it Curiosity Corner because I don’t know what it does, it just is. It is my things assembled in a way that is just a way to look at a lot of things at once. Shiny objects I have acquired by various means.

The mirrors are nutso but I like it a little nutso.

I inherited these two really groovy lucite end tables from a recent exciting purge of my parents’ storage space, which came in a shipment including things like my old soccer trophies and these truly astonishingly long spools I made of my finger-knittings (not pictured). The tables originally came from my grandparents’ house! I don’t really have anywhere for large end tables like this right now, so to maximize Curiosity Corner I put them side-by-side and then put things all around them. Over! Under! Inside! More things!

That blanket folded up on the chair, yonder, I bought at a war reenactment with my friend Chandler in high school. The bud vase I got at a thrift store in Sweden. That little colorful container has a set of matching coasters in it, and once lived in my grandparents’ rec room (the othergrandparents, not the lucite table grandparents). My friend Maya gave me that mirror above the lamp. The lamp is from IKEA and I love that thing. Maybe not as precious as some of the other stuff but I’d still TRY to save it in a fire.

Also on display are a few things I’ve found in the walls or swept into the corner of the attic, that kind of thing. I blogged about the one in the back a while ago!

Is this…doxxing? Forgive me Madame Jeanson.

That pillow in the background was part of the Marimekko for Target collection and the alpaca wool pillow on my safari chair was a thrift find a couple weeks ago! It was $20 with the down insert and is in PERFECT condition. It’s by Elvang Denmark and was…definitely more than $20 new. Look at me with a fancy throw pillow.

Does that about cover things? Mekko’s OVER. IT.

Living Room, 5 years In! published first on manhattan-nest.com