Recently our daughter came to visit for a few days. Chatting away she says, “If I had this house I think I’d change the third bedroom/study into a small theatre room, and I’d turn the big sofa around so as to be facing the garden”.

Mmmm!! Our living room has no windows to the north, full sized glass doors and windows that open onto a north west facing patio, and one other window that faces to the west. Living in the southern hemisphere this means the living areas of our house don’t get a lot of natural light shining in.

Our living room set up was certainly compounding the lack of light with its huge, charcoal coloured, L-shaped modular sofa set in front of one of the triple full length glass door and windows opening onto the patio. I could see her point. The sofa was set up for watching TV, and apart from watching TV, we never tended to sit on it. After all, who wants to sit facing a black tv screen.

Alice went home, and I broached the subject with the Mr of the house. “Humour me” I said, “I just want to see what it’d look like”. We moved the TV unit out, swung the awkward and cumbersome L-shaped sofa around, and yes, Alice had been right. The living room immediately was lighter and brighter.

The study/third bedroom was rarely used as a third bedroom, but the Mr decided we should still have that option, so we did our research and ordered a sofa bed that was highly rated for comfort (and came with a 100 day return policy).

Ok, I can hear you asking why our daughter is banned when we appear to be happy with the results of her suggestion. Well let me tell about the events that followed over the following few weeks….

Firstly, we swung the sofa around in the living room. Next Paul altered the bed frame from the third bedroom, you see, our main guest room had the more comfortable latex mattress and base in it, and a not as nice bedhead and bedsides that sat behind the bed but were independent of the mattress and base. We wanted the nicer looking bed frame, but we wanted it with the latex mattress and base. So Paul did some alterations and managed to successfully join the two. We found a new owner for the other bedhead and bedsides. Now we had an empty room to convert to a theatre room. Paul set the TV up with our entertainment unit in the room, crawled around in the roof space fitting and altering the aerial, and did whatever was needed in that department so as to get the necessary media reception. Our new sofa bed was ordered, and in the meantime we used our camping chairs to sit and watch TV at night. In the afternoons we were enjoying sitting on our big sofa looking out to the garden instead of looking a black TV screen.

The sofa bed arrived. We put together a couple of cardboard boxers with a doona on top to use as a makeshift footstool, and we sat on it in front of TV for about a week. We even set it up as a bed one night to try it out. As a bed we both agreed with all the reviews. It was the most comfortable sofa bed we’d ever slept on, however, we weren’t finding it wonderfully comfortable as a sofa to relax on in front of TV.

Paul pulled apart the big L-shape sofa and we moved three seats from it into the theatre and we moved the sofa bed into the living room, with what was left of the big modular. We knew it wasn’t staying like this, we were just trying things out to see what felt right.

Finally we contacted the suppliers of the sofa bed and arranged to return the bed for the full refund – that’s another story, a very good story, but I won’t go into that now as this is already promising to be so long that it’ll almost be a book before I finish telling you why our daughter is banned.

The next three weeks saw that big, cumbersome, hard to move, hard to dis-assemble, and hard to re-assemble sofa dismantled and re-assembled at least six times. I say at least, we lost count, it was probably more like ten times. Our beautiful Marri wood floors have suffered a good amount of scratches in the process.

We found a rather nice, and comfortable 2 1/2 seater Nick Scali Leather electric reclining sofa on the second hand market for the theatre room and arranged for a local delivery company to pick it up for us. We purchased a rug from Au Rugs that’d go well in the room and we moved a few pieces of wall art to the room. Paul patched up holes in the wall where things were removed, and drilled new fixtures into place for the items that would decorate the walls. We still have to find nice side tables, but generally we’re very happy with the room. The nights are drawing in now as winter approaches, and the room has a cosy feel to it. It’s our little snug I guess you could say.

Mmmm, I can guess you’re still thinking that doesn’t sound bad enough to for us to ban our daughter. That was just the beginning……

In the meantime we finally decided to buy a full sized kitchen dresser for the end of our kitchen. Our kitchen has always lacked storage, and we’d thought about a full sized dresser many times. We love the up-cycled coastal vibe of old pine dressers when they’re painted up, but since moving nearly two years, we’d come away from that look. We bit the bullet, and purchased an old pine dresser to up-cycle.

Nothing to do with our daughter’s suggestion to change the living room – I know. However, we were enjoying the lighter, brighter look of the changed around living room. The, new to us, kitchen dresser once done up will be sure to set a precedent for more of the same. Things snowballed, we’ve sold our beautiful Marri sideboard and have purchased an old pine sideboard for up-cycling. Then I broached the subject of replacing the Marri dining chairs with a more modern, coastal white chair for around our big, beautiful, Marri table. I thought it would help with creating a lighter look in the room. Much to my shock, “What about the table” says he. So we sold the table too.

So now we have a big Kitchen dresser in the process of being up-cycled, a new to us, old wood dining setting to up-cycle when the dresser is completed, and following that, and old pine sideboard to up-cycle.

Ah, but that’s still not the end of it. Without the TV unit and TV in the living room, the room looked a bit bare. We purchased a second rug from Au Rugs – another big job to get the rug under the feet of the big L-shape lounge. It was looking good, but we had to admit – neither of us liked that big modular.

Another 3 1/2 seater electric reclining, leather, Nick Scali sofa came up on the second hand market. The price was amazing, but it was in Perth and the sellers wanted it gone within three days as they were moving house. Perth is three hours drive north of us, and we no longer have a car that will tow a trailer. We didn’t have time to go and look, then, if we decided we liked it, to come home and arrange a transport company to pick it up for us. We asked lots of questions, before taking a leap of faith by transferring a deposit on line, and arranging to hire a van big enough to fit the sofa inside. Once all the arrangements were made we advertised our big modular. There’s a lot of sofas listed on the second hand market, so we put what we thought was a fair price, well I thought it was fair, Paul thought I was dreaming. However, dreams do sometimes come true, and within a few hours it had sold for our asking price.

We picked up the second, new to us, Rick Scali sofa yesterday. It was very, very dirty, but nothing permanent. We’re delighted with it, but now we need some sort of occasional chair to complete the room. Not sure what that’ll be yet, but something will turn up.

So, there you have it – a seemingly innocent comment made in passing, “If I had this house I think I’d change the third bedroom/study into a small theatre room, and I’d turn the big sofa around so as to be facing the garden”, resulted in an almost complete change in our living room and all the furniture in it. It’s involved a considerable amount of work and heavy lifting for both of us, but more so for Paul. I mainly just supervise! So that’s the story as to why our daughter is now banned!

As a footnote – It’s been a long, long time since I last posted a blog. Since selling our caravan I seem to have lost enthusiasm for blogging. I’d been hoping something would ignite my writing mojo once again. This not so little re-make of the living area in our home has helped me realise something about myself. You see, I tend to change our decor quite often, something I’ve always felt a little guilty about, and I’m sure more than few people must think I’m never satisfied. This latest escapade has helped me put this into prospective – it’s not that I’m never satisfied. I just simply love decorating. It’s a hobby, a hobby I love. So, no more guilt trips, I’m going to continue decorating, and re-decorating, enjoying it as a hobby, and I’ll enjoy recording the results of that hobby here. Read along if you choose to, but if decorating, and re-decorating is of no interest to you at all, feel free to unfollow me. I promise I wont be offended.

If you do choose to follow along, coming up soon will be a fair amount of before, during, and after images of up-cycled bits and pieces, so watch this space….