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?

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!

I decided on the Kassett boxes to fill the bottom row of our glorious Expedit bookcase in the living room, to hide the more cluttery stuff that we still wanted close at hand, like magazines and cds. I picked up a few plain white curtains to be used in the bedroom, where my colors are grey, white, and a soft blue. I also got an accordion mirror for the bathroom, and a bunch of frameless picture frames for use in displaying food pictures my friend Alice sent me to decorate my kitchen.

Isn’t it great how buying new stuff motivates you to finish projects around the house? Expect pictures soon!