David and I have apparently established a tradition of celebrating birthdays that end in "zero" by finishing off rooms in our house. For David's 40th, we spruced up the basement. And now for my 40th, we added some furniture to our formerly empty sunroom:
Since this room was largely empty, we've used it mainly for parties, and I was a little hesitant to give up that capacity, but I'm pretty sure it could still serve that purpose if we push everything against the walls. I chose the buffet with parties in mind -- I thought that it could hold a lamp, etc. most of the time, but then be commissioned to hold cakes, wine glasses, red Solo cups, etc. at party time.
The main thing that I knew I wanted in this room was a white, yes white, slipcovered sofa. I love the fresh, crisp look of white slipcovers. I do realize that I have young kids who are very likely to spill juice or drag an uncapped magic marker wherever they go, but people who live with white slipcovers swear that they are kid/pet friendly, since they can be washed and bleached! We've been happy with our basement choice, so we once again went with a sofa from the affordable IKEA Ektorp collection, and since worst case scenario I can get a completely new slipcover set for $49, I'm not too worried about it.
David and his dad drove to IKEA to pick up the sofa a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure that I would have derived a lot more pleasure from a trip to IKEA than David did {and would have almost certainly thrown some other things in the cart while I was there!} but he said that it seemed wrong for me to drive across state lines to pick up my own 200 lb. birthday present. If spending an afternoon at IKEA is wrong, I don't want to be right! -- but I thought the sentiment was sweet, so I let him go get the sofa.
I found the buffet at Nadeau after a scuffle with some furniture in a box. The offending piece was re-boxed and returned to Target, and then I stumbled upon The One at Nadeau. I was originally thinking that I'd find some kind of painted chest for that spot (or find the right chest at a flea market/yard sale and paint it myself) but then I remembered that I don't have any time to go to flea markets and yard sales, or talent for painting furniture, so the ready-to-go-piece-in-front-of-me was definitely the way to go. As it turns out, I totally love the dark wood with the white sofa and the woven/seagrassy texture of the rug and trunks. You can't see much of the detail of the buffet in the photo above, but it has classic lines, a curved front, two drawers and pretty hardware -- it's the perfect size and I luuuuuuurve it.
While I was in spray paint mode from my spooky tree project, I sprayed some orange/green pumpkins from Michael's with white primer (we didn't have any white spray paint in the garage, but the primer seemed to do the trick) and put them on the buffet along with some lucky buckeyes that we collected on a recent hike.
The sofa and the buffet are the only new items in the room; the chairs were one of our first purchases for the porch in our first house maybe 12 years ago, and we picked up the rattan storage trunks at Target somewhere along the way. I'd been planning on getting some kind of coffee table for the room, but I kind of love the way the trunks look, so I might just leave them.
David and I agree that the sunroom is now probably the best looking room in our house. We decided, upon reflection, that it's because it's a fairly small room with no walls or shelves and only one tabletop, so there just isn't that much for us to arrange in a visually displeasing way. Haha. The room is not exactly a retreat because it's located right off the family room where most of our {loud} living takes place, but still, I am thoroughly enjoying it.
