Redesign and Scandinavian Guilt

When we moved into this house four years ago, I immediately painted the living room and dining room a sort of plum color. I've always like the color, the den in the old house was almost the same color, and it complemented our enormous floral couch and other furniture very well.

The enormous floral couch that we've had for fifteen years. A fact that suddenly is making just a bit crazy and wanting to redo the living room. Now.

The color is just not making me happy. It did for many years, but I'm ready for a change. So, I dragged the Adorable Husband on a furniture hunting expedition (oh, how he loves to do that. Not!) to see if there was anything out there that appealed to me. I'm imagining darker walls (maybe bronze or tobacco coloered) and darker, less floral furniture. Black end-tables. Something completely different.

I actually found two couches that I really like, in a sort of bronzy-greenish and red paisley. Strangely enough, I found the same fabric on two different couches (one at AFW and one at Sofa Mart) and like both of them.

And now I'm having serious guilt about getting rid of our existing couch and chair.

Seriously. They're fifteen years old, but they are very nice furniture pieces. We paid a fortune for them, and there is nothing wrong with them that reupolstering wouldn't fix. We could recover the sofa and chair, do a bit of reorganization, and voila! new room. Except not. I called on the sofa and the rought over-the-phone estimate to recover it is about 2500, about a thousand for the chair (assuming I don't do what I always do, which is pick out the most expensive fabric in the place). The Husband just can't quite reconcile the idea of replacing a very nice, very expensive piece of furniture (albeit an old one) with a medium quality (or low, depending on your scale) set of furniture. I guess on one hand I agree with him, but I waaaaant new stuff.

It's good old Midwestern "it's perfectly good! there's nothing wrong with it!" guilt. If we had another use for the couch (a family room, or downstairs or something) then it would be ok to get a new one, but having to sell or otherwise dispose of the couch....that's just wrong. The Adorable Husband made some offhanded comment that I only wanted to redo the room because it was fun to get new stuff -- when I pointed out quite huffily that it had been fifteen years since we bought anything resembling living room furniture, he backed down pretty fast. He just hates the whole "picking furniture" process and only goes along with me under duress. He doesn't have any problem with the living room just as it is.

Except, of course, that we don't really have enough seating (or a proper arrangement) to actually have conversations in the living room with guests. Couch and chair along one wall, tv on the other wall. The Adorable Husband just wants to get two chairs to set across from them -- an arrangement I am definitely opposed to. So I want to get a couch, loveseat, chair, and ottoman in the room.

The only way that really works, of course, put the couch up against the wall with the big windows. This seems vaguly wrong to me, but I've been reassured that it's perfectly fine. We'd be able to have six people actually sit down and have a place to set a glass.

I have a friend (from Colorfaux Creations) coming to give me an estimate for Venetian Plaster on the walls of the dining room and possibly the living room (she likes the idea of bronze) and she'll offer some help with furniture arrangement.

So -- laugh along with me: wanting a different paint color may result in a new sofa/chair/loveseat, new end tables, new drapes, and much angst. Mock us.