Our house is coming together so I thought I’d show you some before & after pictures. The first is of our living room before we bought the house, then the way it currently looks. The walls are now cafe au lait instead of Band-Aid, the club chairs & coffee table are from CraigsList, wooden chair from an Englishwoman’s yard sale, rug is from HomeGoods, and our Ektorp sofa from Ikea will be replaced soon. (The 2-ton sectional sleeper sofa in the basement that conveyed with our house has been recently extracted, so we’ll be moving our current sofa & loveseat downstairs f
or TV watching). I recently came across Bemz, which offers Ikea slipcovers in alternative fabrics, but I don’t think new slipcovers would make this set look any less slouchy. I have sagey-olive silk to make valances. Notice the birch “tree” in the back left corner, courtesy of Cheryl’s neighbors who had put the broken-off branch out for the trash. (Have I mentioned my bird-tree-leaf-berry-acorn fetish?) You may also notice the lovely ceiling fan which we have used exactly never and sorely need on the adjacent screen porch where it will be moved. Dad recently helped us replace our dining room chandelier, so now that we know how to change them out, the rest of the brass light fixtures’ days are numbered. Fortunately, there’s a Habitat For Humanity store locally that can use stuff like that.