If you can't lose it, decorate it!

If you can't lose it, decorate it.

Someone gave me this set of napkins (as a stocking-stuffer, I think) and I just love them. Recently, I realized that the rule applies to more than just clothing. It also applies to home decor.

I've lamented a few times that our living room furniture is stuck in the dark ages, the den era of deep-red-and-blue plaid. It was fashionable for about five years, but is no longer. And it just depresses me.

A while ago, I mentioned that I was looking into slipcovers as an option for updating our living room without the expense of buying a whole new set of furniture. It doesn't solve the "oversized furniture" problem, but it would at least brighten the room.

This is the "mood board" I had pulled together.

SureFit, the company that makes the slipcovers, offers a "swatch" deal: for $5 I ordered four fabric swatches. I'm so glad I did! All of the fabrics looked fine with the Wickham Grey paint, but in my fantasy, I had replaced our large area rug with an inexpensive, but much smaller Ikea option. It wouldn't work. So I compared the swatches to our existing rug.

That robin's egg chintz fabric does not work. Not at all. Now, it could be just that the rug needs a good scrubbing (it's overdue!), but I think the tones in the carpet are muted enough that the chintz ends up making the carpet look dingey.

The cocoa is definitely the best match, though the sky blue and maize also work. I thought about getting a different fabric for the couch than for the comfy chair, but, in the end, decided to go with cocoa for both, for a more harmonious look. We can always spice things up with throw pillows and curtains, right?

So, before I left on my Big Adventure, I ordered slipcovers for the couch and big chair in the cocoa fabric. I'm not 100% positive that they will fit -- the backs of our pieces are really, really deep -- but it's worth a shot.

Welp. I'm back and finally got time to buy a new iron so I could press the darned covers (it really is impossible to fold a three dimensional hunk of fabric without causing creases) and try them on. I started with the chair, figuring that there's no point ironing both until I'm sure.

*Sad trombone sound*

It looks so bad that I didn't even bother taking a "good" picture of it. It's tight in some critical places, and droopy in others. As I'd feared, it's the back that is the worst -- see the way it pulls tight behind the arm on the left?

So we're back to square one. I'll be returning the slipcovers. They were a good option, but this furniture is just too damned big.

To be continued.