She’s going off to a new owner to be stripped, reupholstered, and probably sold off at a pretty penny to someone with enough room in their den for a 9′ sofa with built-in end tables. Along with her goes a pair of careworn wood-framed chairs that we just couldn’t devote the time to restoring and re-cushioning. It’s a sad day of furniture failure in the Seven Ten Clark home.

Oh well. Time to move on and do what we can do, am I right? I’m still dreaming of Macy’s Blake sofa, but unless by some miracle they waive their $225 shipping fee, there’s pretty much no way we’re getting one anytime soon, so that means we’re stuck with old Gold Velour.

Edited to add: I posted too soon! The lady from Regeneration Factory came to pick up the pieces, and Kevin couldn’t let the couch go. I don’t blame him, because if ever there were a couch with perfect bones and in exactly the right shape for us, it was this one. It’ll fit in our basement entertainment area, if nothing else, and we’re going to get on Amy’s waiting list to have it reupholstered. Wheee!

So, yeah, it might be time to take a little jaunt over to my favorite local source for all furniture modern and beautiful, Meta Home, since they’re listed as one of only two sources for this brand in the state of Iowa. Hooray for offering beautiful options to consumers in my neck of the woods! The Iowa City area is a magical place.

Thanks to Pam over at Retro Renovation for posting about these gorgeous couches!

One thing that we’re thinking about in earnest right now is buying a new couch. We’ve been living with hand-me-downs and curbside finds for years, and after spending the entirety of this winter complaining about back pains from sitting on our current one, it’s about time to think about upgrading. For reference, here’s a crappy picture of the current beast:

It’s gold velour and right out of the 70s, and while at first it’s extremely comfortable and intensely nap-worthy, after a while of sinking into it, it’s difficult to dismount and starts to hurt your back. It’s actually a sectional, although we put the shorter leg of it in storage when we “streamlined” our living room the last time we rearranged. It’s time for it to go.

Right now, we’ve got two contenders for its replacement: the Blake sofa from Macy’s and the Digby sofa from Flexsteel.

The Blake sofa from Macy’s has quite a lot going for it: it’s deliciously long, very comfortable without being too deep or sinking, comes in what appears to be a good, durable fabric in great colors, and it’s offered at a fair price (although unfortunately, we qualify for “long distance shipping”, which comes to a whopping $225, yikes). It’s also made in either the USA or Italy, and since we’re avoiding Chinese-made goods, this is a good thing. Unfortunately, the closest Macy’s is somewhere near Chicago, so if anything ever goes wrong, we’re sort of screwed in terms of getting it fixed or replaced.

The Flexsteel couch, which we just discovered at our local Coralville Simpson’s Furniture, is pretty great as well: it comes with a lifetime warranty, it’s actually made in the state of Iowa (!!!), is made of materials that will definitely stand up to the test of time and wear-and-tear, and comes in a really wide variety of fabrics and colors, so it would be very customizable. Plus, we could probably swing cheap or free shipping from the dealer, and we’d have a local place to service it if anything ever goes wrong. The downside of this model is that it’s not as luxuriously long as the Blake (80″ vs. 88″ wide), and it’s definitely not nearly as comfortable.

So, we’re deadlocked on a couch for the moment. FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!

The problem, then, is figuring out what to tackle first after the walls are completed. Here are a few prospects:

• Tearing up every square millimeter of carpeting in the house and installing hardwood flooring ourselves
• Tearing out and rebuilding the basement bathroom
• Tearing out and replacing the stairs leading down to the basement, and walling-off the stairs and putting a door at the bottom of them so that it’s a separate space that isn’t open to the upstairs
• New couch
• The Kitchen of Doom

I’m going to follow this up with a series of posts filled with ideas that I have for these projects.
Where would you start?

Our lounge really isn’t a bad size, considering the fact that we live in a pillbox rancher from the 1950s. This bookcase, as you can see, makes the room look quite a bit smaller and more crowded. Also, it really limits the layout of the room, because it’s impossible to put it on any other wall. And sure, we’ve got cool stuff, and we like to showcase the REALLY cool stuff, but it doesn’t need to be out on display at all times. We want to streamline.

Over the weekend, I came across the shelter blog The Brick House (via Anna from Door Sixteen) for the first time, and I became smitten with her DIY shelving wall unit project. I’m talking deep smit. I love the very minimalist lines, with lots of wall white-space visible. Kevin’s into the idea, although he thinks it might be a little too “industrial” for his taste. Any ideas on keeping the same general concept, but making it a little foofier?

On one of many (many) recent trips to our favorite little Iowa City junk shop, Artifacts, we came across a Lightolier sputnik-style pendant lamp. I passed by it at first, since it’s hard sometimes to just SEE everything that’s in the store, there’s so much to go through. As I was heading towards the front to leave, I spotted it and new it had to be mine. Kevin even liked it, and sometimes it’s hard to convince him to like anything. We got it for a very fair price and ran right home to trade out the old fashioned (and not in a good way) light fixture in the part of our living room that would normally serve as the dining area.

I only have two issues with this light:

1. Four of the globes were missing, so we’ll need to figure out where we can buy more, and then decide if we want the new globes to be smokey and transparent or the translucent white
2. The stickers on the light don’t offer much information, and I’m having a hell of a time researching the piece. Does anyone know anything about Lightolier sputnik lamps?

I think I’m in love!

We spent some time shopping over the weekend, and got some items for the house, so I’m going to call that productive. One of the things we picked up was a table and chairs for the kitchen.

The table is perfect because it’s large when you use the leaves, but they can both be lowered to take up less room when it’s not in use. This is perfect for the little nook in the kitchen under the glass-doored shelves. The chairs are kinda gross, but we’re going to de-grease them and use them until some time in the future when we’ll recover them with something cuter.

At the same time, I picked up a lovely little Zenith bakelite clock radio for $15. I love it.

Kevin has done some fabulous work in the basement. I’m really amazed at how wonderful it looks.

Compare those photos to this and this, which are basically taken from the same angles when we were working on cleaning it out.

On Friday, AmeriClean came in and cleaned both our HVAC ducts and our carpets. Because of the nature of our HVAC system, we actually had a greater than normal number of ducts to be cleaned. We also had our living room, hallway, and three bedrooms with all closets cleaned. The jobs were done by two different workers, and both actually used the word “gross” to describe their respective jobs to do at our house. Yikes. The company was able to cut us a 10% deal on cleaning our carpets since the house was vacant (usually the fee includes the worker moving your furniture around to clean the carpets), so the total for both jobs that day was $497. That kinda seems like a lot, but the difference it has made in the smell and air quality is pretty profound, so we figure it was well worth the cost. Eventually, we’ll be tearing up all of the carpeting, and we’ll probably continue to get the ducts cleaned once every few years.

Some of the concreteboard hung for the tub surround

The craft room

This is what this room used to look like. Progress!

New 50s lamp on a tension rod from Artifacts

Table lamps from Artifacts

On the docket for tonight after work will be finishing hanging the concreteboard in the tub surround, starting to tile, and continuing to prime the walls for painting.

The living room

The other side of the living room

Doorbell and phone nook

Bathroom

The bathtub we both want to save

What will eventually be my craft room

Piles of stuff in Kevin's old bedroom in the basement

Shelves filled with who-knows-what

More piles of crap. You should have seen it before.

Check out the creeping black mold in the corner!

More updates to come!