Author: Staci

Staci blogs about travel at TheVoyageer.com.

Downsized Living Room

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you my living room and it was looking a-something like this…

Nowadays, after bidding aideu to the blue couch inherited from college friends (we passed it on to yet another college student… perhaps it will live forever in the dorms of college students) we are working with a whole mess of mid-century modern furniture…

I love MCM furniture, very much. But I abide by a rule I read somewhere on the interwebs that said that you should only have 30% of your furniture in a given room “match” as far as time period is concerned. And the coffee table, couch, and teak-and-wicker chairs in the background are currently making up the majority of the furniture in the room, making it a little too MCM all at once. In the new place I hope to get some kind of modern industrial shelving unit or TV stand to offset the couch and coffee table, and have the chairs I reupholstered in a different room (or different vignette) to break up the Mad Men party.

From a different angle, I moved the pink and tan rug slightly and set up Doug’s cajon on it for an extra seat and to anchor the rug down. Mosey likes to move the zebra pillow and sit on it to chew his dog toys. I think in an alternate world, this would be the perfect spot for a white leather Moroccan pouf (I am constantly kicking myself for not bringing one home from Morocco–I would’ve saved like 75% off Joss & Main‘s asking price).

Here’s a never-before seen angle of the living room, our media setup. It has never before been seen for good reason… it ain’t much to look at. We’re saving up to get a proper media unit with shelves and doors to hide DVDs and video games– instead of our current setup which has video games stashed in those crates (John Derian for Target some time ago) and the DVDs in a separate room altogether. The pull mechanism in the bamboo blinds is busted, explaining their haphazard hang. And the cable cord coming in from the windowsill? I can’t even. I do love the bicycle print we picked up in Lawrence, KS a while ago, though.

The good news is, the light and airy bones of the vintage furniture lend themselves well to furniture Tetris…

They will fit fabulously on the moving truck!

What do you think? Loving the Mad Men look, or do you want a bit of contrast to break up the teak party? Wanna come help load up our moving truck in a few weeks? 

Open Your Eyes

If you’re reading this, I assume your eyes are open. What I’m really talking about here is something we really should have done to our home waaaay back last fall when we painted the exterior. Painting the wood sections between window panes.

Here’s how it used to look:

And after the exterior was painted (above picture from last September, below picture from last November):

I don’t think you can tell unless I point it out, but all the wood in between the window panes on the front three windows (and all over the house if we’re being honest) was still painted maroon. Burgundy. Whatever color you want to call it, it certainly wasn’t doing much to make the windows stand out. Which they should, because they are pretty cool!

So, finally we painted all the wood in between the frames with Olympic exterior white and let me tell you– it took forever. I don’t know if it was the paint or what, but each window took like three coats which was sooooo time consuming. I’m talking like a season and a half of Parks and Rec. Yes, I even primed beforehand to attempt to prevent the burgundy coming through, but to get a nice even look, it still took three coats.

Anyway, here’s the house now (in blaring sunlight)… doesn’t it look like the house’s “eyes” are wide open? Also, our flower bed is out. of. control.

With the bamboo blinds down, it looks most dramatic. What an update! And I don’t know if it’s a placebo effect or not, but having all that extra woodwork painted white makes it feel like more light streams into the house than before, when they were dark burgundy.

Isn’t it funny how something minor like that can make a big difference? The maroon is now banished from every square inch of the exterior. Preparing a house for sale can sure light a fire under you to take care of long-neglected details, can’t it? 

Friendly Furniture

Am I the only one who views furniture as a dear friend? Even more so than clothes, I think, I get attached to the pieces of wood and/or plastic that sit firmly and consistently in their appropriate space–they provide a sense of comfort and stability. They are what makes my home mine, not somebody else’s. (Okay, I guess a locked door helps that feeling too).

That said, we have been downsizing our funriture stash since we realize that in order to afford an apartment in San Diego, at least at first, we’ll have to downsize from a two-bedroom with generous dining room to a one-bedroom with “dining area.” This is fine. I look forward to the mild weather, the sunshine, the beach, IKEA, you know… the finer things in life. However, it’s not easy for me to part with furniture, especially ones that have been with me the whole time I’ve lived here in Kansas! For example the desk-turned-media unit-turned-back-to-desk and the small blue couch were picked up by Doug and my roommate Lisa before I even moved here! Other things have been picked up for a few dollars here and there–some were even free! It’s not like I’m getting rid of big-ticket items, but the sentimental value makes up for the low price.

The good news is that by letting go, I am allowing myself to fine-tune my decorating aesthetic and opening new possibilities for future purchases ;) I’ve been pouring over the couch section in my West Elm catalog and I downloaded the IKEA catalog app for my iPhone since last year’s catalogs have already been boxed up and put away.

And now, cheesy as it is, a tribute to list of the items that have been downsized.

The desk and the tall bookshelf:

The black headboard

The blue couch

The sofa table/TV stand

The dining chairs

Pretty cheesy, I know. But the house is still starting to feel empty and we still have several weeks before we go. Luckily thanks to my hoarding tendencies we still have plenty of chairs to sit on, even after getting rid of 4 dining chairs and the blue couch. Which means that we will probably still invite company over up until the last day ;)