A few months ago I posted Part 1 and Part 2 of our Living Room Updates. We’d finally covered the horrendous plaster walls with fresh white wallpaper (textured – to cover the imperfections in the plaster), we added coving and re-painted the ceiling. From here this gave us a clean slate to build on, and with only a week or so left until my due date at this point, it was time to get some furniture in.
Today’s update is showing you what made it back into the room.
As you can see from the above, it really has become a family space. Luna’s toys and pram parts are everywhere and that’s just fine by me. But I’m not here to tell you how much I’m enjoying having her and her growing pile of colourful plastic around. That much is obvious. Today it’s about home comforts.
The biggest change for our lounge is the couch. We were sad to say goodbye to our old 7 foot leather couch, but it no longer suited the house – we bought it for our old flat after all. The single leather chair that accompanied it, we moved to the garden temporarily whilst we found transport to take it away. However, I have a confession…
It’s still in the garden.
Here it is on the decking in the snow. Ooops. We have a good excuse I promise. Bear with me…
The chair is one that my dad has had for over 30 years so for anyone wondering if soft leather is for you, if you take good care of it, it could last you a lifetime!
We replaced these with the Storm range from SCS. It’s a gorgeous fabric corner sofa and single chair in a charcoal grey colour with lighter grey detailing.
Oh grey, you continue to be my favourite neutral.
The cushions that come with it mix between block print of the two hues of grey, an embroidered leopard print pattern, and an orange suede-like fabric. It’s unbelievably comfortable and I can’t tell you how much warmer it makes the room look and feel. Not to mention, the corner couch really helps to square off our long and narrow room, making it significantly more social.
I didn’t waste any time when it arrived and I jumped straight onto it before the delivery men had even left! Cringe cringe cringe.
Little did I know that I would actually go into labour that very evening (hence why we didn’t have chance to get rid of the single chair – see, I told you we had a good excuse!) and let me tell you, after spending the next two and a half days on that couch with strong contractions of early labour, I feel qualified to label it a damn comfy seat. Yep. TWO AND A HALF DAYS.
I was officially a beached whale.
We’ve added onto it a few other cushions. I’m trying out the teal colour with the orange, and these Ikat pattened cushions from Zazzle, I’m really enjoying.
Also from Zazzle is this personalised “Clough family” cushion. I’m a sucker for custom stuff and as this is very much going to be a family room, I felt it was such a lovely touch. In fact, I think this would be such a nice present for new homeowners.
Other new additions to the lounge include our new TV cabinet which holds all our various boxes and remotes. It’s a lovely grey oak colour and is from Ikea. It’s nice to have another surface in here since we don’t have a fireplace mantel for decorative items.
Another Ikea special is the Kallax units which I envisage using for hiding away the many many kids toys we’ll no doubt accumulate in here. And yes, that is Darth Vader on top. His days as our Christmas tree topper came to an end, and Joe couldn’t bear him going into the loft with the other festive decorations.
My orange dresser came back in, but I’m thinking of re-painting it in the near future. You may notice though that there is a lego family proudly displayed there and it’s by far my favouite part of the room. We’ve actually had these for ages. Our amazing friend Nick made a lego me and a lego Joe as a wedding present, but on the arrival of Luna he added a Lego baby! I almost cried when we received it. Definitely not the hormones…
Now that we’re starting to really use it as a family and with Luna’s toys taking over already, we’re really starting to get a feel for how the space is best used. Hopefully this year, we’ll see the addition of more colour, more personal touches, and fingers crossed, some actual pictures on the wall!
But admittedly there is still a LOT I want to change in this room.
The goal for this time around was to have it ready for Luna’s arrival and we did it just in the nick of time. In fact, it’s a great starter with a baby. A couch with cushions are ideal for leaning against when feeding. They can come down on the floor to help build a fort out of. The wooden units are far more child-friendly that the sharp glass edition we had before. And the colours and patterns make it a happy place to be. I think all it’s lacking is a bit of va-va-voom and I think I’d like to do something really bold to give it a bit more UMPH.
But that’s what I’ll be looking to do in 2015. Wish me luck.
*Thanks so much to Zazzle for supplying us with the wonderful cushions for the purpose of review. We really do appreciate the brands which support us!
