In terms of furniture, besides the guest bed, we have only acquired one new thing. And it's big.


Before we moved in--when I was anxious to nest--I spent a lot of time trying to decide how to deal with the large living room. When we saw the house the second time, the previous owners had the room like this:

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I'm basically standing in the doorway. To my left was a secretary. To my right a couch. Further in the room against the left wall was the second couch. The very first time we saw it, those two couches were at right angles to one another with one facing the fireplace with its back to the door.

As we were closing I had a chance to meet the owner and she said, "I can't wait to hear what you do with that living room. I never could figure it out."

(What we use as an office, they made a cozy den.)

So I made it my mission to work out this room. We knew we didn't want guests to enter the room straight into the back of a piece of furniture. We didn't want half of the room to be dead space. We knew we wanted to try to avoid putting the TV over the fireplace if possible (not always possible, but let's see if we can work it out). We knew we wanted the fireplace and bookshelves to still be an area of focus.

I use "we" here very deliberately. There was MUCH discussion and emailing ideas back and forth over this room.

When looking at large/long room pictures, I kept coming back to rooms that were divided with daybeds. This post sealed the deal for me and helped illustrate the idea for Kyle. Such great options.

So I mocked up a few options with my floor plan technique.

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Of course it's all very good and well to have agreed on an idea. We didn't actually OWN a piece of furniture like that. So mostly we had this:

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Then this:

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Along the way I was shopping for daybeds and looking at options. Every person that we mentioned the idea to had one of those iron or brass metal-backed beds with a trundle in mind. Like the one my friend Marla had in her study when we were kids that I thought was so sophisticated (made all the more so because it was in a "study"!!)

We kept saying, "We're looking for a day bed... but not what you're thinking!"

Jenny's post had a lot of good suggestions and on one trip through Atlanta we visited the Crate & Barrel and saw the Marlowe Daybed, which was Kyle's first choice from the beginning. SO comfortable. We talked about it a lot. We started actively saving for it. (And at $1,400 + delivery, it was going to take a lot of saving!).

Then a week ago on a regular Craig's List scan, I found what is certainly my biggest CL win to date. A Crate & Barrel Simone Daybed (the design that preceded the Marlowe) for $175.

I'll do the math for you. That's 87% off. Before delivery.

I emailed the posting. No response. Oh well, it was too good to be true. Eleven days later (??) we got an email. The daybed was available. It was about 3 years old. No smoking. No pets. We could come get it.

So now we're the proud owners of the day bed that we've been decorating around for almost 8 months.

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I'm still not sure about the scale. It's easily as big as our couch, and combined with the other pieces in that half of the room (including that octagonal coffee table I LOVE) things over there are quite cozy. And it's not in perfect condition. It has a few stains and we wouldn't have picked that color for the space. But man, we've got $1225 to work with to still come out ahead. (Not that we are in a hurry to... That savings plan was very long term and we live with a small, sometimes-messy person.)

But it's so, so comfortable. Several lovely naps have been had there already. And it serves our purposes perfectly. You can lay on it and watch TV. You can sit on it and read by the fire. It doesn't block the view of the fireplace from the entrance. It provides more seating for either side of the room.

It's nice to see a vision come together. Now to just find the rest of my wish list on CL!