Floored.

Today I’m floored by the following things:

• Finding the most perfect rug with which to pull together my living room design.
• Learning the amount of money I’ll have to spend to obtain said perfect rug.
• Realizing that I’m actually wanting to save my pennies, eat more rice and beans, and otherwise be even more thrifty so that I may justify obtaining said perfect rug.

Yeah, today is all about how my living room floor first stumped, then floored me.

First, a recap:

For months now I’ve been agonizing over the perfect color scheme and design for my living room.   I’d finally shipped and hung the huge painting, dyed my sofa a dark chocolate brown, and picked (I thought) a color scheme that complemented said sofa and painting.  Also, I had this fabulous mid-century chrome and glass Barcelona coffee table.

Initial plan:

• Buy silver & glass accessories to tie coffee table into otherwise wood-dominated room
• Use the blacks and reds from painting as color scheme for room
• Cover sofa in black fabric slipcover, sew pillows in coordinated black/red fabric
• Find black/red/grey type rug
• Hang curtains on either side of the sofa to mask the off-center construction of the room

Concerns with plan:

• Black/red textiles may worsen the dark feel of room (not much natural light coming in)
• Black/red textiles feel out of place with warm brownish wood furniture
• Barcelona table feels out-of-place with all the other wood furniture
• Dogs knock into glass Barcelona table when playing
• Black sofa cover costs $$$
• My gut would prefer a (cheap) light-colored jute or sisal rug on the dark brown floors
• Black/red curtains on either side of sofa would further darken the room

Last weekend, however, I had two majorly thrifty and helpful scores: an oblong wooden mid-century coffee table for only $20 bucks and a huge wood-framed vintage mirror for the wall.  Suddenly I had an “a-ha” moment:  Stop trying to force my room into a color scheme I’m just not loving. 

After the a-ha, a new plan was born:

• Incorporate Red/Yellow/Chocolate/Cream color scheme (all existing colors from my walls, painting, and sofa)
• Retire (but keep) large glass and chrome coffee table;
• Utilize oblong wooden coffee table for more cohesive and small-space-friendly effect
• Hang cream-based curtains (with red or yellow pattern) on walls to keep it light but create the curtained effect
• Order huge jute rug from Overstock.com.  If it really doesn’t work, return it.  Easy peasy.

So I did a little window shopping, then I made a mood board.  And just like that, my living room went from agonizing to awesome.

See?

Here’s the divine details:

The background of the mood board is the gorgeous rug that floored me.  It’s dark brown with yellow and red, but I just love it.  It just works.  I may save my money and just paint a yellow and red floral design on a light jute rug.  Thoughts?

I spied the vintage opera posters during last weekend’s thrifting excursions.  I love those operas, I love their color schemes, and I love the artistic style.  Perfect for the little wall spaces on either side of my living room windows.

Brown couch gets tied in by the addition of throw pillows that I wil sew from the awesome retro fabrics I found at Tonic Living, my new favorite online retro fabric source.  Sample swatches are in the mail as I type. Aren’t they fun and funky?  Finally, I’ll sew curtains out of a combination of the yellow/white and red/white fabrics.

Problem solved.  Let’s throw a rug on it and call it a day.  What do you think?