Living Room Update

Good morning!

And whoooo, LAWD, what a weekend it was. I need to report back to you about my new/old television  show addiction, the worst estate sale I've been to in a lo-o-o-ong time, and some other various and sundry things that happened since you and I last spoke, but let's break out the big guns in conversational updates this morning and talk about the living room. It's foremost on my mind!

Behold! ORDER!

This simple domestic tableau is the result of hours, upon hours, UPON HOURS of hauling furniture and books. Don't believe me? Look at this photo from New Year's of this year, where you can get a better idea of a) how much I love to wear festive hats and b) the sheer volume of STUFF in the living room:

Imagining a new year with less stuff! Obviously! Well, probably not, but should be!

Those shelves came with me from my high school bedroom and they were just as filled with books then as they are now. Classic Hollywood biographies of movie stars, mainly,  mixed in with recipe and interior design books from the fifties' and sixties', mixed in with reprints of old horror comic books, the complete works of F Scott Fitzgerald, and anthologies of ghost stories. I've pretty much covered all these items in previous blogs, so you have a good idea of the cross-section of interests here in print form, in my living room. Problem is, I also LIKE TO HAVE A LIVING ROOM. I've come lightyears from my actually-bordering-on-Hoarders past as a human magpie who would sooner actually die than part with some dearer items from her collection, but these books have stayed put pretty much since I moved into the house, in one room formation or the other, glaring down from the shelves in chronic, constant disorder.

Last week, doing pilates on a mat in the floor of this room along with Mari Windsor on the television, I was crunching my poor, weak little body into various unnatural poses when the solution to my living room quandary presented itself-- storing hundreds of volumes of books in a limited amount of space would cease to be a problem if you stopped having hundreds of volumes of books. "But! What do you mean?" my tiny id cried out, "I happen to LIKE all those books!" I grappled with the concept of no longer having 24/7 access to Barbara Leaming's respective biographies of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth (who were married, you know), or a lexicongraphic study of  20th century slang aptly named Flappers 2 Rappers. Suddenly, however, the idea of having access instead to a little breathing room appealed to me way more than having physical representations of the things that I like clogging up my sense of space.

How I felt after having moved out all four bookcases and their respective contents #bestmovieofalltime  (source)

So, long story short, we moved books, and books, and BOOKS to McKays. I probably kept one or two shelves worth of items--Diana Barrymore's All My Sins Remembered and a pair of Goosebumps books in French (!!) were on the top of the stack in the green room office that I have yet to assimilate into the bookshelf in that room, but I traded something like 10 boxes worth of stuff for $70 in cash (no trade credit! I'm just going to get in worse trouble!). I'm frrrrreeeee!!

I called my mom and managed to finagle my grandma's early 70's Trutone Western Electric console radio out of her, which, in truth, she has been trying to get me to take for most of the 2000's. I can remember years as a little kid of running into this solid sucker's sharp base corners on a tricycle or with bare feet, and pulling on the false-front cabinet doors with a wondering tenacity as to why the darn thing wouldn't open. The top on this console is a giant lid, essentially, for the workings within, which include a turntable, an 8-track cassette deck, and an AM/FM radio. I was surprised when I plugged it in that the radio and left speaker still work! While my heart's still ultra mid-century, I have to admit that the seventies' heaviness of the design on this piece really matches better with my crazy delicious Broyhill sofa set and the Spanish-influenced wrought iron dining table and chairs. This painting (below) is from the same estate sale as the coyote fur coat and the chair I couldn't keep. It's enormous, but I think that makes it perfect for the ONE piece on that wall.

Two remaining reservations in terms of the living room: tv presentation, and color. In terms of the tv, I just don't know what else to do with it! You know? Unless I drop some serious money on a vintage repro, or figure out some way to integrate it into an existing vintage tv-shell (seems like a lot of trouble for someone who doesn't know much about carpentry to begin with), it looks like this is my best possible option for displaying a flat screen in this room, with what I have. As far as the color, while the wild, Miami turquoise of the current wall paint was specifically matched to this photo of David Bowie from the "Life on Mars" video (would I lie to you?), it matched WAAAY better with the all-gold couches and doesn't let the Broyhill pattern pop the way I think it deserves to.

As much as it grieves me to say it, I think I might paint the room an off-white. Something SUPER clean and standard, so that all the golds and turquoises and wood-tones of the room are jetfueled into the foreground in terms of what catches ones' eye, and my house looks like something out of Apartment Therapy. Thoughts? Am I going to regret it the moment I put brush to wall surface? I need your advice!!

A closeup of the couch:

And a (dismal looking in this light, it's really quite pretty in real life!) side chair near the door:

Have you had any life changing epiphanies about the set up of your living space lately? Made a big change in arrangement or color? Just got sick to death at the sight of something in your house? What color would YOU paint the living room? Let's talk!

That's all for today, more tomorrow. See you then!