A Sofa for All Seasons

For some reason, as soon as the temperatures warm up, I start craving slipcovered furniture. Maybe it reminds me of the beach but there is just something about slipcovers which screams summer to me. Am I alone in this desire?  This year, I decided to address the problem head on when the weather started heating up in late April. Our family room sofa came from a great little furniture store called Urban Retreat in Reston, Virginia. It's not a sofa we'll have forever (at least not in our family room) but the size and price worked well for what we wanted post renovation. Oddly, it was one of the only immediate furniture purchases we needed to make post renovation!

It's covered in a rugged chenille which doesn't show a speck of dirt or wear. Last year, I warmed it up more with some monogrammed brown velvet pillows, but the overall look wasn't doing it for me in the warmer weather.

I started considering making a slipcover. I have done it before on a chair in my son's room and it came out fine but it would not have withstood the wear and tear of the family room. Fortunately, I remembered that this particular sofa was available from the manufacturer with a slipcover. Hello! I emailed Urban Retreat for a price which came back at $500. Honestly, by the time I bought the fabric,cording, and created my not so great slipcover, I am sure it would have been this much. So I ordered it up in an off-white denim and now my sofa looks like this...

I still need to steam out the wrinkles but I couldn't wait to show you. I have another update in the works which I'll share soon!

I love the idea of having a seasonal sofa which I can warm up in the cooler months, then throw on the slipcover in the summer. I guess this means that I could get even more longevity out of this sofa. The added bonus of the white denim is that it would go with pretty much any room in my house so if I ever decided to move the sofa to the basement playroom, it would work flawlessly.

I'm curious - does anyone else use a slipcover only in the warm weather? Do you like it? Do you remember to take it on and off?

House Tour Room-by-Room Link-up Party: Master Bedroom

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend with lots of sunshine and summer fun! We had a great weekend with lots of time in the sun and a few fun projects in the works here. Hope to share those with you soon!

We're back again with the room-by-room house party - master bedrooms this time around. I really love the light in this room. It's a southern exposure so I am so glad we did the transom windows above the large windows out to our backyard. (Yes, our neighbors are really that close!) Adding super tall curtains also emphasized our great ceiling height.

Here's a picture of our bed with the most recent pillow and lamp shade updates.

I still feel like it's missing personality so I hope to improve that in the coming months. It's hard to give a room personality but also keep it peaceful but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Sources: Bed, dressers, and nightstands - all purchased used (Bed is Lexington); chair - Overstock; swing arm lamps - Home Depot; lamp shades - Restoration Hardware; quilt - HomeGoods; duvet cover - Pottery Barn; monogrammed pillow - A Needle Pulling Thread; center floral pillow - Cindy Crawford for JC Penney; plaid pillows - Burlington Coat Factory; cream lamp - Marshalls; floor lamp - JC Penney; curtains - JC Penney.

So, let's see your rooms. Party stays open until the 13th at midnight so you have lots of time to find your old post or do a new one! Don't forget to grab my button below or link back to this post.

&<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">lt</span>;div align="center">&<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">lt</span>;a <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">href</span>="http://www.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">houseography</span>.net" title="<span style="" class="goog-spellcheck-word">HOUSEography</span> House Tour Link Party">&<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">lt</span>;<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">img</span> <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">src</span>="http://1.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bp</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">blogspot</span>.com/-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">JGIsAMeEFtM</span>/TZvQQMB4TQI/<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">AAAAAAAAFHM</span>/<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">XsRknFYMYSs</span>/s1600/<span style="" class="goog-spellcheck-word">HOUSEography</span>+Button+HOUSE+TOUR+PARTY.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">jpg</span>" alt="<span style="" class="goog-spellcheck-word">HOUSEography</span> House Tour Link Party" style="border:none;" />&<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">lt</span>;/a>&<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">lt</span>;/div>

p.s. Like this post, vote for HOUSEography on Picket Fence Blogs by clicking here (and that's it!). Thanks!


Linking up to: Just a Touch of Gray

Come on over...

Happy Friday! I'm visiting my blog buddy Cassie over at...

Cassie is a miracle worker with paint and old ugly furniture and a great designer! Here are a few of her creations!

Be sure to also check out her shop!

Have a great weekend!

The best make-over we didn't have to pay for...

Our backyard is undergoing a makeover and it's not costing us a dime (yet). Our neighbors are ripping down the very old and nearly condemned garage and replacing it with a brand new one. We can't wait to see the result!

Here's a picture of that beauty coming down...

Thanks Mike and Jacki! Mike and Jacki added to their house at the same time that we added to ours in 2009. We had so much fun sharing stories. Now they are using our contractor to build their garage!

We are still making some decisions on the fence and how it will work. We'll most likely wait until the garage is finished until we make any final decisions. It will be nice to have the back part of our yard in great usable shape instead of the jungle that it is now.

Pantry wall makeover

We have a really cool pull-out pantry in what would have been just a plain old wall if I hadn't had an epiphany during our kitchen design process.

This pantry is a godsend since our kitchen cabinet space is relatively little since we opted to have windows on either side of the stove instead of upper cabinets. Last year I upgraded the pantry with an interior organization system (more on that here), but the outside was feeling a bit unfinished. It was totally unfinished above the top cabinet where we filled in the space with a piece of wood before installing the crown molding. We couldn't decide whether to paint it white or yellow so we left it primed and unpainted for a year. Yikes. I stopped noticing it after a month.

So, we had to do something with that space and while dreaming up some solutions, I started thinking about how the yellow on the sides made the cabinet look kind of dinky on the wall. Adding molding on the sides seemed like the obvious choice. I originally considered window trim but it didn't look right. Then I thought about our front door with the fluted molding on each side and thought it might work perfectly. Handy Hubby brought home two pieces of 4" primed fluted molding. 45 minutes later we had this...

He also added a piece of trim molding to match the rest of our kitchen crown molding across the top edge of the cabinet where it meets the tiny strip of wall above. There was a small space between the molding and the edge of the cabinet. Jim caulked the crack between the wall and the cabinet. Once painted, the space looked like another contour on the trim. At the bottom, he removed the top piece of baseboard so the fluted piece would butt directly into the baseboard without an overhang. Here's a somewhat blurry picture to explain what I'm talking about. He did a little 45 degree piece to butt it back into the fluted piece.

I spent an hour painting out the new trim on Monday night because I swore I would not get through the weekend without painting that trim for fear it would be another year before I got around to it. We had the paint left over from the crown molding in the kitchen. It's Benjamin Moore color matched to the color of our cabinets. I brought one of the doors into the store with me!

 Here's a close-up of the molding.

 Now a quick before and after...

What do you think?

Linking to...