Project House Update: Carpet, The Devil Inside Part II

So here's where we left off in Part 1. You know how at the end of that post I said I didn't have any pictures of the room with the new carpet installed, but no furniture? Apparently, that was a lie because I went through my camera and found these beauties. I'm pretty sure, however, these were taken after Attempt 1, so the seem is obvious in the second image.

Since laying out rooms in icovia is the best thing ever, I went to town with this one.

It didn't involve buying any new furniture (not yet anyway), but it incorporate a shelving unit from Ikea that had been seeing boxed up and unassembled for months and a yet-to-be-filled self watering plant base. Cats make Ikea so much better.

And now, finally, some After pics!

 
It still feels a little empty and not complete yet, but it's a start! I have faith it will evolve over time.

Part of the rest I do love this room so much is it houses so many of the little items I had been accumulating over the past couple of years and finally gives them a purpose.

Let's start with this old truck we bought at the antique's fair. We had tried using it as a coffee table, but it was too small and too uneven.

However, with the addition of a few legs we found on ebay and spray painted...

...it became the perfect side table. We were able to customize its height to correspond to the arm of the couch and it fits around the base of my giant lamp.

Speaking of my lamp, it's back in one piece! And it works and everything (I took the picture accidentally before the light bulbs were in.) My lamp finally has a home!

And we hung a good portion of the art I've been hoarding in our bedroom closet for the past four years. This first one was another antique's fair find. It's two pages of a newspaper article from the 1930's showing all the firsts of aeronautics; the routes and who accomplished them.

The next one is probably wins the prize for the most money we have invested in a piece of art and that's all in the frame. At a yard sale, I saw this amazing three dimensional map of Tucson from the fifties. It wasn't for sale, it was just hung in a garage with a bunch of tools Dan was rummaging through. I asked what they would sell it for and $2 later, it was mine. The frame, however, is more than 100 times the cost of the map itself. To show off the map properly, the frame had to be very thick, therefore, very expensive. I love how it turned out, though.

The last pieces in this batch of art were some old family photographs. They include a portrait of Dan's grandfather (and I absolutely love that the sconce lines up with the light source of the photo), a studio portrait of Dan's parents from the 80's, and a group photo of one of the regiments my grandfather oversaw.

The room isn't finished or anywhere near it, but it's a room. It's a room we can live in. A room where we can set up our Christmas tree and read books and play board games. The to-do is still long and not forgotten. The fireplace still needs some tile touch-ups and Dan hasn't even started on the mantle. The windows were supposed to get done last year, but the window company fell-through on us. And baseboards.

In spite of that, we're all getting pretty comfortable in the new space.

Who knows how long it will live in this configuration, though. Eventually, I would like to turn this room into a cozy playroom for our distant-future babies. I'd move in our sectional and recliner, add a TV, and make it a family room. Something like this:

Dan's not sold on it yet, but I'll get him there. Like everything we do, it'll take some time...