New Living Room

So, we finally have our living room furniture! We ordered it in mid July and they said it would take 6 weeks to get it. Well, it took 8 weeks! We thought that would give us lots of time to sell our old couch and chair. Well, wouldn't you know it, the very same day we ordered the new furniture, the old stuff sold! So we were without decent living room furniture for 2 months!

Here are some before and after pictures.

Before:

After:

Before:

We tore out the wall of spindles and the archway wall.

After:

We had to put in support beams and a post to replace the old supporting walls.

When we went to pick out our new couch we chose a beautiful red colour. We ordered from a new custom order program at the Brick called Choices. You choose your couch style, and your fabric and then your colour. The fabric swatch we picked was a gorgeous deep red and it match the circles on the accent pillows perfectly. I was so excited about the beautiful deep red that we'd be getting. But when it arrived it looked like this:

It looked PINK!

It was supposed to be a dark red like in the area rug and like on the circles on this pillow:

I was shocked at how off the colour was. Everything else about it looked right. Right couch style, right fabric, and there was only one red colour to choose from, so I was sure the order was right, but I didn't remember the red being so light. So, the next day I got on the phone with the sales rep and told her that the colour seemed off. We had specifically borrowed an accent pillow ahead of time, so we could shop around for the perfect area rug. The rug and the accent pillows looked awesome together, so we had been sure that the couch would work too. She was positive that they didn't make a mistake and that order was correct. Well, I told her I would still like to compare the fabric swatch to our couch, because I was sure the fabric swatch was a darker red. She said that would be fine. So I took a couch cushion to the store and compared to the fabric swatch and sure enough, our couch was noticeably lighter than the fabric swatch. I was sure they would make us keep it because it's a custom order and they told us ahead of time that we can't return a custom order. She offered us different accent pillows that might match better. But I said we'd still have to return the area rug. I told her I loved the accent pillows we chose and was thrilled with the area rug. They looked like the perfect match. I didn't know what to do. I told her that I wished we could rather have the tan couch set. It would work way better than this pinkish set. Then we could keep the accent pillows and the area rug. Then she said "Hang on a minute" and she disappeared into her office. She came back and said "You can have this set in the tan colour, and we just happen to have a set in stock in our Winnipeg warehouse". YAY!!! I was thrilled! Thank goodness I didn't have to keep that pink set and return everything that was supposed to match it. And we didn't have to reorder it and wait another 8 weeks! So, a few days later they came to our house and made the exchange. Whew! What a relief! It's a bit of a disappointment that I didn't get that beautiful red couch I was hoping for, but at least we have something that works now. Now I just want to order the accent chair in the same fabric as the accent pillows! It would look so great in our living room! I just have to convince my other half!

And here's another item I bought to match the set. I found this in the US. It matched the rug and accent pillows perfectly too, so this too would've also been a waste of money if we would've had to keep the pink set. I plan to hang this above the tv.

So now.... window coverings! And then everything is done!