living room

what do you think of the new blog look?  i love it.
so another room i'm mulling over lately is our living room.  currently it looks like this:

please don't judge us.  i did finally take care of the laundry after i snapped these photos.  anyways, we are aware that it is horrible.  we are living {as usual} under construction so there are boxes of bathroom tile all over the house. 

back to the the living room.  see the problem {as i see it} is that the room is long {24 feet}, the woodwork is beautiful but it is dark and we will not paint it and the rugs have made the room dark.  {we had to put down two 9x12 rugs so the floors wouldn't get scratched up by dog and baby.}  throw in a dark brown leather couch and ...  do you see where i'm going with this? 

so i think we are going to paint it a light sage green color {i really want to do a sandy tan/cream in the dining and living room but chad wants more color}. 

so i am going to need to lighten up the space with the accents.  i am thinking of repainting our side table and coffee table in an ivory color.  and then throwing down a smaller rug. 

found on ebay

from ikea

i think either of these would lighten up the space.  and then i found a chair at a thriftstore that i want to buy and have reupholstered.

did you know at joann fabric's website you can design your own furniture and accessories.  now you need to have time and patience if you are going to check out it out because it keeps getting stuck.  but what do you think of one of these?

some throw pillows in some different colors and then something done with that desk area.  that's for a different post.  i need some cute storage too.  any ideas for the desk area or storage?

new couch

it was requested that i show a pic of the new couch in our living room. i apologize ahead of time for the poor lighting in the pictures. which is why i'm taking a photography class!

here's our old couch. still in good shape for the most part. now it will reside in my mom's cabin in the woods. don't ask. it was her couch to begin with anyways. and for her hospitality at letting me/us use it for the past 9 years, i threw in the couch cover we've been using, as seen piled in a heap on the couch. how nice am i?

here's the new couch. seriously, so sorry for the lighting. this room is so weird that i can't get the lighting correct with my point and shoot camera. you get the point though, the couch is much more our style. although it was bigger than i expected it to be. we almost could not move it through the front door. which made me laugh - the thought of nice leather couch on the front porch was funny to me.

one day when we have the floors refinished, the custom made tables and the walls painted i'll take a better picture! until then i will be happy with this major purchase out of the way!

a unique table

for those of you that read this blog i think you know that at irvington bungalow, we seem to do a lot more planning/wishing than actual purchasing items or finishing projects. why stop now, i ask you?

for years i've been on the hunt for furniture. mostly living room furniture and mostly for years because we have not had any extra money to actually buy the furniture yet. but also, it is because i want to have furniture that reflects our style, the period of the house but also pieces that not everyone has in their own living room.
as i've mentioned several times we have some beautiful, old weathered barn wood we're using for an outdoor table. i'm hoping to have some leftover for a living room table. something a la this:

from sundance, mentioned here in a previous post.
or this, below, from pottery barn.

when in doubt, google. the other day i typed in something akin to: handmade metal welded furniture. what popped up but Fosterweld. and can you believe that he is located right here in Indy? i emailed him to see if the table would be something he would consider creating for us when the time comes. so far, he has been so nice and down-to-earth. i think it would be so cool to have such an original piece of furniture in our living room!

walls like pottery barn

for once i've looked through a pottery barn catalog and said: wow, this looks like my house! instead of, ugh. i wish my house looked like this.

check out the wall in this bathroom:

in this pic the wall looks stucco or something but in the catalog it just looks like an old plaster wall. discolored and cracking. when i saw it, i felt an instant kinship. could pottery barn be coming around to our sense of DYI style? is it possible that the residents of irvington bungalow are actually trendsetters and not just a couple of old-house loving, idealistic, lazy, too-many-projects-not-enough-time/money/energy people?

take a look at my pottery barn walls:

but, wait. we have them in the living room too:

really. you have to have a sense of humor or the fact that my walls have looked like this for five years would drive me to tears on a daily basis. i have to go submit my house for the next PB catalog now.

paint decisions have been made (finally)!

does anyone read the onion? omg. i think it is SO funny. if you have ever struggled with decisions regarding paint then you have to read this article: "Study Finds Paint Aisle at Lowe's Best Place to Have Complete Meltdown". i was laughing so hard when i read it because it is so so true.

anyways, i thought that would be a good lead in to tell you that we've FINALLY made our paint color decisions for the living and dining rooms. we have even bought the paint. this should make me feel more comfortable that these will be our final decisions but we have already bought paint for these rooms and never used it. oh well.

the problem was finding the "right" shade of green for the living room. while our LR is large for the size of our house, we have really dark and wide wood trim throughout. chad wanted a darker green shade while i wanted a lighter shade. in the five years we've lived here we have managed to never paint the walls but to adorn them with about 8 shades of green and two shades of yellow.

the paint swatch collection has actually increased since this picture was taken in 2005. but the wall pretty much looks the same.

we've decided on a two valspar paint colors from Lowe's. Epic for the LR - a dark-ish green/tan color (very similar to the 3rd color on the right, above) and Lyndhurst Estate Cream - a super light creamy-yellow for the dining room. hopefully we'll be painting in a few weeks!

living room furniture

i'm in the middle of cleaning out one of our spare bedrooms. i had to take a break because chad and i are getting into squabbles about what to keep and what to pitch. why is it so difficult??

anyways, i'm sure i've mentioned this before but we still have the same furniture in our living room that i had in college. hand-me-down ikea tables and a 20 year-old couch from ethan allen. granted, these things work, but they are by no means permanent (or are they????)

for awhile i wanted an old trunk for the living room table but i can't seem to find a functioning antique one that isn't huge. the good thing about never actually buying anything is that you can change your mind - cost free! so now i think i want this table for our living room:

i like how it is glass and doesn't appear to take up much room. our living room isn't tiny but it isn't huge either. we already have a rug like the one in the picture.

we have an armoire for the tv and stuff right now but i'd like to replace that will a small console table and a flat screen tv.

and i LOVE this armoire for extra storage of movies and books.

why is my wish list always so long?!