the great living room reveal!

So here's what we're working with.

(Please note these pictures were taken in the evening, but since the room doesn't get much light anyway, they pretty accurately reflect how things look in daylight.)

This is Sad Elephant, aka: the couch we are replacing:

I have never been able to accurately describe that color. In fact, I've always called the couch elephant-colored. Only in recent years has it become saggy and sad. It might have served us much longer if a.) it were a more modern shape, b.) the back cushions hadn't started resembling the skin of an 85 year old elephant, c.) it were an actual color, and d.) I believed in slip covers (to instantly change it to an actual color).

As a thousandth reminder, here is the new couch:

CB2.com

I have selected a picture in its natural habitat, a room. Such clean lines! So deep and cozy for tall people! Zero back cushions to sag! Only throw pillows, which are so much more easily fluffed and replaced.

Give me a moment to sigh.

And here is the companion chair. Yes, it doesn't match the style of New Couch at all. We're hoping it doesn't look absolutely awful. Or that no one (including us) notices it because New Couch is so overwhelmingly awesome.

It's a darn comfortable chair. And accent pillow of inspiration looks quite comfortable in it. 

Please pardon the mess in the background. The hallway cannot be contained. That's a different project entirely.

Continue reading to see how freakishly well New Couch matches Comfy Chair.

See, I told you!

I couldn't have planned it better.  I'm glad I didn't.

And here, my friends, is the room. With its room-darkening discount store oriental rugs.

Heck, the room doesn't look half back in this picture. Probably because it's tidy, which is not its normal state. And because I recently moved the rugs into this linear, sensible pattern. They used to be dramatically arranged in an overlapping, bohemian pattern. Which was a waste of rug, now that I think about it.

The rugs are fine. Great, considering they came from the discount store down the street and were purchased on two totally different occasions. But we think a neutral color will both brighten and open up the space.

Also please note that we have a lot more wall art. For some reason we have chosen not to put it on the largest wall, as we are strange.

Here's a different view. And this is not even all of our library. The one that is suffocating me. (Not pictured: another 6-foot bookshelf.)

Yes. We have the world's oldest television and rabbit ears. We were in grad school. What the heck did we need TV for? For this I envision new shelves (read: ones that have never lived in my parents' house or my dorm room), hopefully backless ones that don't look so darn heavy. Oh, and a nice TV bench. And shelves that match, or at least try to.

This is what it looks like when I start boxing up my library.

Seriously, that's what progress looks like. The top left shelf used to look like all the other ones.

And finally, this is a really big problem.

It was  bigger problem before Husband so dutifully cleared it of papers, junk, and more junk. But we don't have a desktop computer any more, so this is a major waste of space. If it were able to organize anything besides a printer that doesn't work (and, as Husband says, perfectly display is radio-controlled BMW), it could stay. In the future, the table on the far corner in the first full-room picture will go here. With one of those file drawers underneath it. An adequate solution to two of the room's biggest organizational problems.

Stay tuned for a recap of my first and most successful home improvement/redecoration projects of the summer--the kitchen table!