I wish this post was sponsored by Room & Board
My last post was about all the not-fun things I have recently purchased for the house (concrete slabs and man-sized holes in my backyard). It is therefore only fitting that I follow up with a post about the good stuff that is also bleeding me dry.
Mercifully, our remodeled house does not require a ton of new furnishings. All four of us, for example, have upgraded our bedroom furniture within the last six years. My dining room table was handmade by my brother, and therefore will continue to be the only dining table we ever own. The kitchen and bathrooms have their own built-in decor, so the only spaces left are the living room, the entry wall, and the office/guest room.
One of the most challenging aspects of the living room is the placement of the HVAC systems; basically it’s ideal for heating/cooling air but terrible for the placement of furniture. The intake for the living room is smack-dab in the middle of where I wanted to place the media cabinet I already own. As a workaround, we opted for the Coles Media Cabinet, which features doors that have slats for ventilation. We plan to use a jigsaw to cut out a larger area of the back panel to allow for greater air flow. Our existing media cabinet will now be playing the role of buffet in the dining room.
We also ordered a couch. But first, as my daughters say, some lore…
My children have known two couches in their lives. The current one is a Joybird sectional we bought when we moved into the original house in 2016. It’s okay. But the first…the first haunts my dreams. Seriously, had I known that it would be so impossible to recreate the magic of this couch - to say nothing of its matching armchairs - I would have clung to it with both arms and reupholstered it as necessary until the day I died. But I was foolish and young (well, early 40s), and when we moved I threw it to the curb like a common college futon. I am only being slightly hyperbolic when I say this couch might be one of the true loves of my life.
Its name was Burke, and it was manufactured by Precedent Furniture out of North Carolina in the mid to late aughts. Room & Board discontinued it in 2009, one year after we bought ours. I know all of this because my obsession with this couch runs so deep that I emailed the company last year. I routinely scour Craigslist for this couch. If you are a Room & Board employee, and you have stood still in my vicinity for more than one minute, I have told you this story.
It had a midcentury design, beautifully tapered legs, and cushions made entirely of foam. It was comfortable, supportive, and beautiful, and I have yet to meet its equal. All of this, I hope, provides some context for my earlier couch shopping meltdown.
I have sat on at least 100 couches in the past few months. And while none was the one, my family and I managed to find one that we all found agreeable.
We went with the 96” Fia in Mori Ink chenille. (Daughter #2 specifically requested that we consider a non-neutral couch this time around, one whose name didn’t include words like “mink” or “putty”.) This is going to be the only seating we purchase for the living room before we move in, because I feel like I won’t be able to decide what else the room needs until we actually get in there.
We also bought bookshelves. In our Brooklyn apartment, our two San Francisco rentals, and our San Carlos rental, we had these two bookcases that we bought at a Lowes sometime in the early 2000s. They were made out of unfinished but real wood, making them unquestionably one of the nicer things we first owned together. I finally got around to painting them, in what can only be described as a nesting frenzy, just days before my water broke with Daughter #1. I painted their back panels sage green, and later repainted them a sky blue. When we moved into our original house there was truly no space for them, and I put the set on Craigslist for someone else to enjoy. We also pared down our book collection significantly.
In the new house, we have a LOT of wall space to cover, so we decided it was time to bring back some bookshelves. Also, because of the HVAC output vents, there’s only so much we can do with the staircase wall. Originally, we were going to go with Room & Board’s Beam modular shelves, but unfortunately they only go up to 78”, and we’ve got 162” of vertical space to fill. Rejuvenation has a similar product called Holgate, and these go up to 96”. In order to accommodate the vents, we’re doing 28” shelves on either side of 60” shelves.
Next, for the entry way, we went with two items: a slim 8” console table and a 36” round mirror:
And, finally, for the office/guest room…nothing yet except a TV. It’s a start.
