Thursday, November 26, 2009

Great Room Project Update, Thursday, 11/26

Minimalism II

I went up to IKEA and picked up a pair of cool Swedish minimalist chairs. IKEA is a great place. A lot of their stuff is a tad on the utilitarian side of things, but a lot is also actively interesting. They have great product names. The chairs and footstool below are from a line called Poang. Not sure if that translates into anything at all. Plus, they have good food, especially the Swedish meatballs and the desserts. But I was there at the wrong time of day to take advantage of that…

Continuing on with the minimalist theme, here’s the room with the Poang chairs assembled and installed. Kind of a knitters / music listeners / TV watchers cave. Hang something on the walls, and I could live with this.


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The new sofa arrived on Tuesday. It’s B-I-G. Big and tweedy. It even came with those matching pillows. I think we are moving away from minimalism now, and getting back to a new and improved version of the way the room has historically been arranged.


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We still have to get stuff up on the walls: the big glaring hole above the fireplace, the wall above the piano, etc. And the curtain scheme needs to change, but that will be Betsy’s contribution – drape selection of any sort is not a part of my personal skill set!
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I’m still looking for a way to rationalize putting up some kind of ye olde and rustic outdoor gear collection. Like a set of old wooden skis, some snowshoes, and a pair of wooden canoe paddles. Just seems proper for a displaced Northerner living in the New South. The collection could go up on the high wall, maybe above the kitchen area. I already have the paddles. Too bad none of my 1980's era skis are anywhere near rustic enough. A pair of classic 210cm Rossi ROC550's, anyone? Those probably date to the late 1970's. Jeez...


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Great Room Project Update, Tuesday 11/17

Slowly moving stuff back in

1) A number of smaller projects have kept us from just hauling stuff back into the Great Room. We've run out of room to store CD's, and are looking for a better system than the current free-range CD stacks that grow on various tables, speakers, and corners of the house. If that big, honkin' entertainment center had another shelf above the TV, we could stash them in some kind of box system. So I had to build a shelf to fit up there. Hey - another chance to use my newly-acquired stain matching skills!

2) Hate to move our crappy old couch back into a nice new room. We sure got our moneys worth out of it, since it's older than either of our kids. It's lived a long and useful life, and is ready to be retired. But that leaves a pretty gaping hole in the decor, so we've been couch shopping.

Here's the room as it stands. Actually, I kind of like the empty, stripped-down, minimalist scheme. Except for the beat-up couch. I suppose we'll eventually want to hang pictures, arrange doo-dads, and move the rest of the furniture back in.



Here's one of the sofas we're considering. It's really a multi-colored tweed fabric, but it may end up looking like a plain beige couch from over 3 feet away. We may need to go with a darker fabric. The floor is light, the walls are light, the wood furniture is all pretty medium. The only dark-ish thing in the room is the rug.




The local squirrels are really tearing around outside today...