Shop Your Home... {Living Space}

I love this concept. Mostly because it saves this Dutch decorator, and her handsome Dutch husband, a buck. Every penny is a prisoner, you know. So yes, we always applaud the "using what we have" approach.

So you may recall how I was growing tired of all the brown in our living space. Brown walls, brown couches, brown rug, and brown coffee table. I'm all for earthy colors schemes, but this was too much earth.

We actually really like our couch and love seat (the love seat reclines which is a piece of heaven for us), so they aren't going anywhere fast. They are also quite old but show little wear and tear. They work hard for us.. hiding stains and giving comfort.. we like them. Even if we did want to replace them, we have our money going in different directions right now, none of which include new furniture.

My eye has always been on replacing that rug. And oh, we've looked, and looked, and looked. We've rubbed our faces against rugs all over the city (that sounds weird). But we just haven't seen one we've both liked. Maybe 2015 will be our year.

But in the meantime (picture a light bulb above my head), I decided to swap out the creamy, shag rug from the basement for the brown rug in the living space. There was some ugly sweating involved, and some very confused children staring at their weird mama... but the effort turned out to be worth it.

It's 5x7 like the brown rug, really we need an 8x10 but for now it's breaking up all the brown. And it's so cozy. I've seen the kids sprawling out on this rug with their books and cars which didn't happen before, plus we've played lots of family games here. Sitting on the floor is so nice. I also sent the other coffee table packing (to the basement). I still plan to redo that thrifted coffee table, and the makeover is in progress. I'm crossing my fingers that it works out. And by the window, we brought in our new / old chairs that we recently reupholstered here. We think it looks a lot better in here.

Here's how the basement TV space is looking with the brown rug:

It looks fine. I really can't believe we've held on to this rug for this long. I bought it from Walmart when I was a poor university student. I find rug shopping tough.. you? It's tough for me to imagine a new rug in my space with all my furniture. One of these days, I'm going to just bite the bullet, and if it doesn't work I can still return it.

But overall I feel like I'm looking at a lot less brown, everywhere. And the (temporary) solution was right under my nose. High fives all around. 

Here's a before and after so you don't need to scroll up:

Ahhh, so much better.

What about you? Have you found a decorating solution in your home, which just took some sweat and awkward grunting? Maybe it was rearranging your furniture for better flow, or digging art out of the attic... whatever it is, I don't think we realize what we really have right under our noses. 

By the way, in case you were wondering, this creamy shag rug was an affordable purchase from Home Depot back when we were redoing the basement.