The Livingroom (in progress)
I took advantage of a moment when the teenagers were still asleep, the little girls had moved their play to another room and the master of the house had descended to his cave. This is our living room in its lived-in, not in any way staged, state.
We love colour and have been struggling with this particular room. The wallpaper is from the 1980’s, a discreet choice in tune with its times, but the checkered beige just doesn’t go with our furniture or preferences. A year ago, when Granny still reigned the house, she had a deep red sofa and two armchairs around a dark brown table, and powder rose coloured curtains, and the ensemble was quite pretty. We, however, used to have teal walls and most of our stuff was red and orange and brown with white highlights, and all that just doesn’t work on beige background.
Some years ago my mom brought us thick and heavy red wool rugs for the living room in the Old Home. Before that they had served her and my dad well, so now it was becoming clear that we would have to let them go. The living room is approximately 4,5 metres by 4,5 metres (and 2,8 metres high), so really we’d need at least a 2m x 3m rug. They’re damn expensive. We found a perfect one but to be honest, we do still have some other needs to cover, like day-to-day nutrition, so when we ran into this black one on a discount pile we had to give in. It’s a bit too small, but once I get to move the furniture around (Husband just told me he’s getting to the point where he’s heard the suggestion too many times to comply, ever) it will be alright.
We used to have a white sofa, which had gradually over eight years turned to off-white. We also used to have only two grown-ups and three children, whereas now there are four and a half grown-up-sized people and one child. A new sofa was on a shopping list last summer, also partly because we felt we deserved something nice for private family use while the renovation process was on and the house builders occupied the rest of the house. We knew the teal walls wouldn’t happen in the New Home, so the sofa had to carry that memory.
The photo on the wall is taken from an airplane window. It’s the bit of the wing that says ”do not step out of this area”. I still get the giggles.
We probably won’t do anything about the ceiling, at least for now. But the wall colour has been decided. We’ll just paint over the old wallpaper with a light mustard yellow. If you look up over the stove you can see that we tried the bird’s egg blue up there, knew that the colour was wrong but could see that the paint worked on the wallpaper. The old tile stove is original, although there are electrical resistors in there to warm it up, so there’s no need to bring in wood.
The lamp was a souvenir that Husband’s great-grandfather brought in and installed to the same place where it still is. The revolving chair was the result of us walking in an expensive furniture store a couple of years ago as a joke, to test-sit Jacobsen’s Egg. It was okay for me but Husband’s shoulders didn’t quite fit in, so when the sales clerk came to ask us whether we had found what we were looking for we faked arrogance and told us their articles did not satisfy us. The clever man took us by our hands and led us to try this recliner with an adjustable headrest that makes it comfortable for both a medium-height and a tall person. We had to get it. So now we can’t afford the rug anymore.
