more décor

Here’s another before and after.

A really awesome mod chair from my grandfather’s building materials company that I snagged from my mom’s garage a few weeks ago:

And now, in my living room, freshly back from the upholsterer’s:

I’ve kinda fallen in love with this chair, but it didn’t happen until after it got its makeover.  When I first brought it to my house, I really couldn’t see past the dust and the broken springs.  But I had a theory that the chair would clean up well, and so, out of loyalty to my grandfather’s excellent 1950s office decor and out of curiosity to see how far a new fabric could take us, I took the plunge.

Now I am halfway through my reupholstering project.  Two chairs down, two to go.  That’s been a goal this fall: to perk things up a little around here and make our living room feel less like a toy repository.  No major changes.  We still have stacks of books and piles of tin soliders everywhere.  Our coffee table is still a train table.  A dragon castle still sits in front of our fireplace.  We still have the rug my son dumped an entire bottle of tempera paint on and the sofa that got painted with Elmer’s glue.

I’ve looked at a lot of design sites as I’ve been thinking about how to spruce up our house, and I’ve seen a lot of crisply clean and beautiful spaces.  But whenever I started to feel envious of how orderly or put-together or artfully arranged those houses were, I’d remind myself how much fun we have here.  Our house will never be a showplace, that’s for sure.  But it’s hands-down the best home I could have wished for.

And that makes the redecorating project easy.   I don’t need best.  I am perfectly happy with better.