Couch Potato

Here's the thing about a remodel.  Sometime you get in the middle of it and the "okay" things you thought you were going to stick with, suddenly seem to stick out like a sore thumb among all the new stuff.  Case in point, this bad boy.  

 

Long time readers (Hi Mom and Dad!) might remember our love for the Ikea Ektorp 2+2 sectional.   It was one of our first major purchases as young homeowners over 8 years ago, and it has truly gone the distance with us- from crazy parties in our 20's to a puppy and poopy diapers in our 30's.  Two years ago when we moved to the new house we gave this baby a facelift with a new slip cover to retire the old Green Machine, but other than that it's held up and looks like new.

The problem was, and I knew it from the start, a corner sofa really didn't work in this space.  While we appreciated the added seating and place to put our feet up, the couch had to come out in front of the sliding glass door at the far side of the room.

 Not only did this force us to pull the couch out from the wall so we could have a little walkway back there, but it blocked the view and a lot of light.

Also, around move-in day, we found a friend for Mr. Etkorp in the form of this chair-and-a-half below.  It was on super-duper clearance at Target for just $75.  Hubs threw it on his shoulders and muscled it up to the register like a Strong Man competition. 

But it wasn't a great color match with the couch, and all that gray (plus black and white) was incredibly boring, as seen in this terrible in-progress photo below.

Despite all these flaws we really felt like we could channel our inner Tim Gunn and make it work, which is why they were all stacked up and tarped in the center of our room during the ceiling scraping project from hell. 

And then one Saturday the Hubs saw a pretty amazing deal on furniture, and convinced me to just stop in and look.  The sofa + chase combination he found looked even better in person than in the ad. It still gave us a little extra seating and place to put up our feet, but this style wouldn't block the sliding glass door. And then by some miracle we found a complimenting chair in the clearance section.  Before our boys melted down, we somehow went from "just looking" to "proud owner of a new couch and chair" for about $700.  

While 700 bones might be a great deal for 2 pieces of new furniture, it's still a really big purchase for us, so as soon as we got home I went into Craigslist mode.  I posted ads for both the sectional and chair, and barely hit send before the emails started to come in.  I must have under priced them both, because a few bidding wars ensued, and within 24 hours we sold both pieces of furniture for $625 total.  Yep- do that math with me, ultimately we got our new couch and chair for just $75.  BAM!

 

Don't get too excited, our celebration quickly came to a halt when we saw the furniture in the actual space.  Our awesome new charcoal gray couch was green.  Really green.

I'm not sure if it was the lighting or what, but it didn't work.  We tried.  We wanted to love it.  The Hubs vehemently proclaimed that it was in fact not green.  "It just needs some pillows...."  "Perhaps with different light bulbs..."  Finally we came to terms with our new unintentional Green Machine when a friends came over.  Hubs asked him, "Do you think it looks green?" and he responded, "What color is it supposed to be?  It's definitely green."

Lucky for us we had a 15 day return policy on the couch, and they happened to have another option that we overlooked the first time because it wasn't on sale.  But now 2 weeks later, it was- for the same price as the first couch we purchased!  It was like it was meant to be.

It's gray. :)

 Our chair works better with it too.

Not sure if we'll keep rocking that ottoman, but it works for now.  We're also considering layering another rug here, but that's TBD. And sure, we have to get stuff on the walls, and that end table in the middle is a hot mess, but for now we're just enjoying the place to sit.  It's progress.