Blue Living Room Blues

I am still ho-humming over our living room. We recently had our housemate leave, taking with her a lovely oatmeal colored recliner and making me miss the soothing color and wonder if I should cover our sofa with something similar. This would be radical.

The thing about our sofa – it’s a 1960’s Hide-A-Bed with atrocious fabric, but beautiful lines. It fits perfectly in the space, is no-nonsense, but so cozy, AND so low to the ground that nothing can get underneath it (read: glass from a broken wineglass, cat toys, cat hair, lost socks, slippers, ETC…). The only thing is we had been wanting a leather couch, and I hate to go to any expense/effort (and covering a couch IS effort) if we’re going to get something else.  But as it turns out our tastes are pretty expensive in the area of leather couches (here is one place I have no interest in IKEA-quality), and as I have mentioned before, I don’t know if I trust that much costly leather around the cats (or myself, for that matter. I have been known to get nail polish on a brand new bedspread).

Couch and Coffee Table in Question p.s. Can you tell accent pillows have not been a huge concern as of yet? It’s amazing how the simplest things can escape your view when still worrying about where we were going to put everything. Now I see those sad, mismatched little pillows and think “HOW DID I MISS THIS?!” (this is also a good time to note that since it’s raining and gross outside today, I clearly need to get out).

 So, after examining the couch and discovering it to be gloriously compartmentalized, here’s what I think I am going to do. Cover the couch in a lovely, soothing oatmeal color using an inexpensive fabric and staple gun. . This can be accomplished by buying unbleached canvas painter’s cloth from Home Depot ($19.99 for a 9×12 foot spread) for the structure, and then buying something softer for the cushions. I am excited by the two-toned effect that will come from having two different fabrics, and the durability from using painter’s cloth (which is built to withstand liquids). Then I can get my leather fix by covering the coffee table you see above using a feaux-leather vinyl and padding, transforming an ugly wood piece into a table/ottoman. Ta-DA! I will keep you updated 1. If I actually get around to all this and 2. If it looks any good.

Desired effect:

   It’s always hard to find an exact replica of what you would like to achieve, but here is a cozy living room with blue walls, an oatmeal-toned couch and a dark brown coffee table, mimicking the shade of leather I would like to use. The main differences between this room and mine are that the wood floors are much darker, the walls are lighter, and I am using red as an accent instead of pink, but this is actually a pretty close match. I am very interested in rooms that use cool colors but appear warm -this is definitely one of them!

 

Now that I think of it, this reminds me of a post I did on an article in Home Beautiful with designer Peter Frank (see above) where he designed a slipcover for his couch to match the drop-cloth the painters had used to protect it. I am actually amazed that I had forgotten about this – he uses almost the exact same color scheme I am going for, and the couch is the same color! Seeing this picture now, I am wondering if it would be fun to cover the lampshade by the couch using the scraps from the slipcover project – oooh stay tuned!