Accidentally Nautical...

AllAllSo when we moved into this place we knew about the soft blue walls and red/silver damask wallpaper in the living/dining room, but we weren't really sure what we were going to do with it.  This one room was almost as big as our whole previous apartment, so we needed a bit of an upgrade on the furniture.  There is some beautiful [if only slightly uneven] hardwood flooring, which Dan hates, but I LOVE.  We have an unused/blocked off fireplace, so we have a nice little mantle to display all of our little knick-knacks [and hang our stockings from when the time comes in a few short weeks!].   But somehow everything in our living/dining area is blue, red and white, so we've got a bit of a nautical color scheme going on, and if we can keep it clean, it looks pretty nice [though that is really hard to do with a baby...].

We asked our landlords if they wouldn't minds leaving their dining set for us, because for the past three years we were using my old desk as a dining table.  Now we can use the desk as an actual desk, huzzah!  Actually it's used as a table where we keep our phone, printer and take-out menu's [just in case I'm feeling lazy... or if the boy is going crazy...], plus the stroller blocks it now...

Somehow we actually managed to not spend too much money in this room considering that we had to buy all new sofas and chairs.  I was actually originally going to use our old sofa, but re-cover it, and just add on another sofa or a couple of chairs, but we got such a good deal on this set that we could donate our old sofa, and never have to look at it ever again!  We got our sofa set [including a 3-seater sofa, armchair, accent chair and storage footstool] from DFS for £830 total.  It was a floor set that they were trying to get rid of to make room for the new lines coming in, and it was by far the best looking set in the whole place [by miles].  The accent chair doesn't match the room at all, but I am going to buy some fabric to make a slip cover at some point.

The console table behind the sofa is something that I made, based one something that I saw on Young House Love.  I bought two white desk legs [they look like mini-bookshelves] from Ikea for £30 each, and then nailed 4 1"x4"boards to the top to span the two legs [I found these in our shed when we moved in, so we didn't pay for them at all].  I painted the wood white with our leftover trim paint and BAM! Console table for £60!

We got the curtains and pole from Linens Direct for £50 total.  Not bad for sheers, curtains and one pole.  The rug is from Next  [£53.99 inc. shipping] and I've already managed to ruin it [I put it in the washing machine after E peed all over it... turns out the colors ran everywhere].  It doesn't look bad, just a little tie-dyed in the white parts.  We also just bought a couple of anti-slip mats for underneath so it wouldn't slide all over the place [£19.98 for two at Argos].  We had to get a new TV stand, because our old one was too wide [and I turned that into some artworks in the guest bedroom], which we also got at Ikea for only £25.  The only other thing that we bought for this room was a small Billy bookcase from Ikea for £27 [in which to keep all of our boring stuff, i.e. bills and other assorted paperwork]. 


Everything else in the room came out of our old apartment, either the living room, or the bedroom.  I still have a couple things to do in here, like the slipcover for the chair, and finishing up one of the side tables [but that's almost done - and it only took me 4 years!]. D also wants me to 'make his bookcase funky' like I did for mine a few years ago, but that will be another free and easy project, that I can get to during nap time.