How I Want This Room to Feel
The sofa in our front living room was never intended for that space.
A few years ago, I bought a new sofa for the living room. I liked it when I ordered it, but when it arrived, it simply did not fit. It looked awful in the room. So I moved a sofa from our family room into the front. That sofa had already been repurposed once from our loft, and it didn't really fit the front room either, but it worked well enough for the time being.
Then we spent about two years raising kittens. They turn two this month.
There were four of them, and along with raising them came some behavioral issues their mother, Nassim, apparently needed time to work out, including clawing the furniture. Then another kitten found her way to us, and she definitely came with some behavioral issues of her own. Nassim was not playing mother to this baby. She drew that line very clearly.
Buying new furniture during this period would have been a waste of time and money.
Things have greatly improved and recently I found myself thinking it was time to really figure out what this room should be. My immediate second thought was, wouldn’t it be nice to finish it before Thanksgiving?
I started by reaching out to my daughter and consulting with her. She has an ability to envision a room and understand how all the pieces will work together. I don't have that gift. I can look at something and immediately know whether I love it, but creating the entire picture in my head before it exists simply does not happen for me. Or the picture I create doesn’t match the outcome.
I talked to her about what I wanted and asked her to show me some ideas. She brought me an image of a room done largely in natural colors, and I loved it. That is usually how I make a decision. I know it when I see it.
She is planning something I cannot envision: two sofas in the room. I'm not seeing it, but she is, and I will leave that to her.
The cognac leather came next. There is something about both the color and the slightly midcentury feeling of it that immediately appealed to me. What surprised me even more was how much I loved it with deep olive chairs. Together they began to give me a sense of what I wanted for this room. I would love to find a cabinet for a record player, speakers and albums.
We are bringing more natural elements into the room too, including plants, and we are considering bringing a stained-glass treatment that my daughter did in her room, which I love, into the arches of the windows, incorporating greens.
There will be no lamps. I don't like what cords do to a room, and we already have recessed lighting, so they really are not needed.
The question is whether there will be drapes. I think they are needed and I think they would be beautiful, but I can also see our felines viewing them as a climbing challenge they might want to overcome.
We are still making decisions, which is part of what I am enjoying about this room. I know how I want the room to feel even if I don't know every detail yet.
What I need to do first is to remove anything that isn't staying and clear out the clutter that has accumulated in the TV wall unit.
There is one requirement, though, that isn't negotiable. This room has to survive us.
There are the adult children who live here and the ones who visit, our four-year-old granddaughter, friends and family gatherings, seven cats and three dogs. People sit down, animals jump up, things get used, and occasionally something is going to happen. It’s just the way it is, and I have a policy in my home. There is nothing here that I am going to cry over if it breaks or hurt another person’s feelings over. Things simply don’t carry that degree of value. I enjoy them and they make my life more comfortable, but that is the beginning and the end of that. That doesn't mean I don't care when something gets damaged. I do. The first scratch, stain or imperfection is usually the one that bothers me most. Then I move on.
The tables in this room already have imperfections, and I may not replace them. They work with the new furniture, and the truth is that I have a four-year-old granddaughter and a sixty-something partner who still does not entirely understand why he should use a coaster. More imperfections are going to happen. I don't celebrate them. I just don't want them to take the joy out of a room.
As if that philosophy needed testing, one of the two cognac sofas arrived with a small amount of damage. It was noticed immediately. Of course I’m
disappointed. This was a brand-new sofa, and I wanted our life to be responsible for its eventual imperfections, thank you very much.
The damage itself doesn't change how I feel about the sofa or the room. It does, however, reinforce something I already know. Things will happen. What matters is how we respond to them. I grew up, at least part of the time, walking on eggshells. I don't want anyone to feel that way in my home. I want my home to hold life and living in the moments.
For this room in particular, I want people to spend time. I want it to be inviting and calming, somewhere we enjoy being and want to linger. I can see conversations that go on longer than expected, a lot of laughter, movie nights and Christmas mornings. Somewhere in its future, I see a record player and a collection of great records.
There will undoubtedly be a cat on the new sofa.
Probably more than one.
And yes, eventually something else will get scratched or spilled on or marked. I would rather have a room that shows evidence of the life we've lived in it than one everyone is afraid to live in.
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