Living Room: A Progress Report

I stopped my inside/outside posts because once we moved into our new house, we didn't do nearly as much decorating as we thought we would. I had this picture in my head that I'd be scouring street fairs and markets treasure hunting for $1.99 Civil War era chairs. Because... you know... one hears stories. But any time I did show up to a market or swap meet I felt overwhelmed. Frustrated by everything's close-but-no-cigar... ness.

"This would be PERFECT if only it worked!"

"I'd buy this is in a SECOND if it wasn't hot pink!"

"I'll give you 200 bones for this $900 rug! No? $225?"

...And then one day we woke up and were living in a room with no lights. (Literally. Not one.) We lit candles and pretended we were an 80's ballad but that grew tired eventually. And expensive in the Voluspa department. Nine months later... we finally went shopping. At Ikea.

We purchased three small table lamps and plugged them in behind the bookshelf in a neat little row, situating them atop the shelf.

The Jonesbo Egby - Ikea

The room has high ceilings and no recess lighting anywhere. No wiring in the walls for us to hang some cool wall fixtures and although our landlords are down for us doing pretty much whatever we want, the fact that our house was built in 1929 and has never been wired for fixtures doesn't exactly tempt me to go there. So! Our only options were floor lamps and table lamps. Except we hadn't any end tables (I had this fantasy of buying ten tiny lamps and having an electrician wire them together as one light to place over the fireplace. Again. The fantasy was a lot easier to construct than the reality. This is why I will never be crafty.) and floor lamps are tricky because they need furniture to support them.

Our grandiose reading area, though eventual, has not yet happened. Instead? The dogs have a massive bedroom to share with our friendly dust bunnies.

Little bitty lamps were a great solution for needing light in a room where floor lamps didn't fit the bill, and because they're placed so high, give off plenty of light. They're also quite charming I think! (If you ignore the emptiness of the room that surrounds them!)

As for the other side of the room, the "lived in" part, we found a lovely modern hanging lamp. I'm not usually a fan of modern - my interior style is more "eclectic boho antiquey" (your new band name) but Hal and I agreed this lamp was a go for the money/space.

CB2 "luxe floor lamp"

The lamp on the Clavanova is an original John Lloyd Wright lamp that was (no joke) sitting in my parent's garage for the last thirty years. (John was married to my great-grandmother and built the home my Nana still lives in. More on that, here/here.)

The rug was also a CB2 purchase. (It's no longer in stock. We literally bought the last one. From the Miami store. Because someone had bought the last one in the LA store an hour before I called to buy it. Which sent us all on a wild goose chase calling every store in North America. There was one left. In Miami. I cried with joy. The end.) I'd been holding out for my favorite Anthropolgie rug to go on 99% off sale but that didn't happen. Strange.

Clearly, we're a ways to go before the room is perfect. The couch is old and broken. The chair, an antique is there for extra seating, not so much style and the walls are mainly bare. (Wall art cometh next. My plan is to have some of the artwork on my mother's walls giclee(d). (All the art in our house is family done and/or gifted and I feel strange purchasing art with no sentimental value.) So the space needs work. Quite a bit, actually. The thing is? I kind of love the unfinished vibe of the room. The "in progress" ness of it all. It's a relief in a way. A reminder that no matter how much "gets done" there's always more to do. Always, always, always infinity always.

How about you guys? Any great finds lately for your house? Cool lighting? Rugs? Swap meet amazingness? Treasured booty? And if you're local, where do you go for goodies? Twelve years in Los Angeles and I've still yet to hit up the Rose Bowl Flea Market for goods. Which is something I need to do. Which is something I WILL do. As soon as I have the cargo space in my automobile (we're in the early stages of Minivan shopping. More to come on that later) to handle the kind of purchases I intend to make. An ancient ship anchor for example.

GGC

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Updated: The Treehouse is Melissa and Doug (purchased last winter). Small Dollhouse is Calico Critters (was the floor model at our favorite toy store in LA, gifted to us by the owner, which was so totally kind of her. This is why it pays (in a thousand ways) to support small businesses. They become your friends.)