House Spouse

At the top of my feed reader are my subscriptions to Apartment Therapy-Chicago, Design Sponge, Bluelines, DominoMag and Ready Made. I love to fawn over pretty interiors and functional small spaces. My own space is anything but! This living room of ours is an endless project for me. Maybe it’s the length of the room or our abundance of Ikea furnishings. I just can’t get it right! My interior design skills are lacking big time. The space never seems to work for us! It’s where I spend the majority of my day, either in the creaky arm chair reading for class or at the desk Andrew and I share, typing up papers. We’ve done plenty of purges and we clean the floors, dust and pick up regularly. Now we just need to figure out how to arrange this space to make it a place I love to be in! I’m using “we” and “I” interchangeably, because it’s really me who has the problem with this room, not Andrew.

Anyhow, I did make some progress with our couch. I love this couch. It’s the most comfortable, functional couch in the world. It’s a perfect place to nap, for overnight guests to sleep, and a gathering of friends to sit. It’s really ugly and dingy, though. The upholstery is ripping on the arm and because it’s cream colored, it is really showing its age. Here are the latest Before and After pics:

I removed the throw that was covering the couch and recovered the pillows with pillow cases I sewed with Amy Butler fabrics. I think it looks pretty good and is a nice focal point to really work around for the rest of the room. However, all that dingy-ness is exposed. I know I’ll get it recovered (professionally), but I’m trying to decide on an inexpensive way to do that. My sewing skills are lacking, so constructing my own slip cover is out of the question. Also, what color should I recover it with? For some reason, turquoise keeps coming to mind.

I need some advice.

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