We’ve steadily been updating the furniture in the living and dining room.  The furniture from the old house really doesn’t fit in the style of our current house, so we’ve been selling bits that we won’t use to fund new finds.

Our old corner sofa is temporarily living in the other half of the kitchen, which we’re kind of turning into a play area for the kids.  Ain’t nothing that sofa hasn’t seen, it can take it.

In its place, we are now the happy owners of two grey Chesterfield-style sofas.  No more threat of knees touching, which was Barry’s constant fear of the corner sofa.  We went back to DFS for these because it stood us in good stead for the last one.  We did spring for the fabric protection package they do though.  Two kids; one still to wean and toilet train?  Hmm.

We’ve just sold our trusty Ikea table and chairs and bought this table and bench handmade by a lovely guy Barry found on eBay (ignore the Expedit unit in the background, that’s no longer in the room!).  He drove up from Leicester to deliver this in person to us (and was going on to Edinburgh to deliver the next one!).  It’s painted in Annie Sloan Original White chalk paint, so I’ve bought mismatched chairs for the other sides that I’m going to paint in the same finish.  If only Jude would let me put him down, I’d get much further on that project!

You can see our new curtains in the background here too.  I originally ordered some grey floral ones, which were just ok.  After trying them out for a day, neither of us could decide whether we liked them or not, so I figured that meant we didn’t really like them… back they went.  This room had checked curtains when the previous owners were in situ too, and it really does work with the room.  These are from Next, and when I get a minute, it’s my job to take them up so they’re all floor level.

We bought a unit for our TV from Homesense.  It’s got that country feel.  If you’ve seen that episode of Friends where they’re getting all the stuff from Pottery Barn but Phoebe thinks it’s from a flea market, it’s a bit like that.  But I love it anyways.

The final piece we’ve bought for the living room for now is this dresser.  Another eBay find, it’s really rough and a bit too distressed for my liking, and the bottom is slightly damaged, so it needs sanding and repainting.  It’ll be redone to match the table and chairs in Annie Sloan Original White chalk paint, we’ll stain the top darker and we’re going to replace the handles with some lovely ceramic ones.  As I don’t have any office space any more, this is also where all my office and sewing stuff is going to go, and I need to think of a way of displaying some of that nicely as we don’t have (nor do we want) ornamental plates.