Functional Home Decor

Good Morning!

One of my big interests, as you may have gathered from the previous post about those that I nominated for the sunshine award is interior decorating. I work hard to make my home look nice for cheap and use whatever I can to make it more functional.

My latest concern was my love seat. The way that my home is set up, I find myself most often sitting on the love seat that my brother gave us. When we bought our home, we were moving out of a temporary interim of living with and taking care of my parents. Prior to that, while I was pregnant, I nannied for a couple who we lived with-all the furniture was either theirs or the homeowners (they rented), and stepping even further back, we lived with my husband's old room mate when we were dating. We left the couch behind as I hated it, and we had no where to put it.

So, when we bought our house, we put out a call for furniture and wound up with a couch and love seat from my big brother. It was perfect timing-he had someone moving in with him that had better couches. They didn't match, which is something I had always wanted but not enough to put us in debt getting there. There is nothing I love that much! So, since July, we've been using these couches. The love seat has a bottomless pit of hunger. Things would slide off the back of the cushions and right down into the bottom of the love seat.

Soon, I also began to notice that if I were sitting in the love seat the correct way (I often sit with my back to the armrest) there is this lovely board in the bottom of the back that hit me right in my lower back--talk about painful!

This tax season, we knew we had to do something, but agreed that if we bought a replacement for one, we would also have to replace the other at the same time. I searched and searched. Every day for a month, I was on craigslist, just watching for a good deal. A few came, but always either too far away or at the wrong timing.

I am on a forum website, and asked about slip covers. Someone mentioned they were trying with no luck to sell the brand new set they bought on their local CraigsList. After some talking and looking into them online, we decided to purchase them.

So, I bought from this lady a nice khaki colored set for $75 including shipping. The part that makes it a heck of a deal? The love seat one would have been $90 on sale and the couch one would have been $110 on sale at JcPenney, where she bought them to begin with. The reason she was selling them? They didn't fit her own couch.

So, I now have covered the desire to match my couch and love seat-frugally. Also, the love seat is prohibited from eating things--at least them going all the way down the back. Next, we are going to go to the fabric store.

I have 4 throw pillows already, that I am going to re-cover to fit the decor. I am going to make a large pillow or two for where that wood sits in the back--this didn't work previously because the couch would even eat the PILLOW!

I am very excited about this for many reasons-a.) the love seat won't go to the landfill, b.) we are managing to cover it frugally c.) No more flipping the love seat when my phone or computer mouse (or anything else) goes missing d.) I feel like an adult with the way my furniture "matches".