Our Home Tour: The Living Room



Our living room at CDLV is small, and because we use our adjoining sunroom as a "family room" of sorts, the living room remains a formal space with casual decor. I'd like to tell you that I spend hours of my week lounging in one of these chairs with a French Martini (pineapple juice, vodka, and Chambord - it's delicious!) and my favorite book, or lazily sprawled on the sofa deep in thought ... but it's simply not true.

Nor do we live with fresh flowers everyday, (these are here because of the photoshoot), and most of the time you'll find a lazy black cat named Salem deep in thought on that sofa for me! Yes, this is quite possibly the least used of the rooms at CDLV.

The living room sits right smack dab in the middle of the dining room and sunroom, and opens up to the foyer and staircase. Because of my large brick fireplace, I have no wall space - which requires a floating seating arrangement, balanced by my Ikea Ektorp Loveseat, slipcovered in Linen by the amazing slipcover company Comfort Works.

I can't say enough good things about Comfort Works. I wasn't sure that I'd like the Ikea sofa, nor did I think that I'd keep it for longer than it took to come up with the money to upholster the much nicer knole sofa I had in the garage (now in the sunroom). But once I got this linen slipcover from Comfort Works, I fell in love with that Ikea sofa, and it's here to stay.

If you've ever thought about buying an Ikea Ektorp series piece, don't hesitate. Not only was it extremely easy for me to transport from Canada, and put together (alone), it is surprisingly sturdy, and very comfortable. And if some of Ikea's own Ektorp slips don't tickle your fancy, check out Comfort Works. They have so many choices, even leather - yes, REAL leather - and you can have a great sofa, at a fantastic sofa, be the perfect fit for any room.

Some of these pictures were taken with a tripod. I finally dug mine out of the pile in the basement, and I wonder if you can notice the difference? Let me know.

Weighting either side of the sofa are the leather chairs we bought in Texas. We have 4 of them, and as I'm sure you've seen, they get moved around pretty frequently. I've thought several times that I would buy another Ektorp loveseat and flank the fireplace instead, but I don't have any storage space for these chairs - and it wouldn't go any further to our using the room any more frequently - so I'll save that money for now.

The coffee table is an old luggage cart from the Cincinnati Railroad. It's stamped 33 and has a great little tag on the left end that gives it even more charm.

I got the cart for free. A friend of ours had just bought a flower shop in Buffalo, and the adjoining building had tons of stuff that he allowed me to dig through. I found this cart, and a great ladder. For a while I left the cart as is - then Restoration Hardware, Ballard Designs, Wisteria, and several other catalog companies started selling them, and I moved ours to the basement. Then, when I was at the Philadelphia Restoration Hardware, I saw a great cart with a glass top instead of the wood plank, and it had me back here tearing the planks off of this bad boy.

The glass is from a coffee table that we didn't bring from Texas, although we did pack the glass. I don't know how that happened, but I'm sure it had something to do with space. All in all, I love the new look of the table, and I know from the reveal I did of the table here, that a lot of you do, too!

My large blue and white garden stool came from Phil Michael Trading Company. I love their stuff, and when I saw this beautiful stool, I had to have it. If you're looking for one - check them out. They also have very nice accessories for any room!

The zebra rug was an Ebay find. The listing did say that the rug had some small problems that would be easily fixed by someone with access to a taxidermy studio. I thought I'd give it a try, and won the bid at $300. When I got the rug, it had more than small problems. The tail had been torn off, the rug had a 3" L-shaped tear in the center, and the area near the missing tail needed to be mended and backed so that it would stop peeling off. Now, the rug is probably about 50 years old, and given that it's been a rug for 50 years you can't expect perfection.

I love the rug, and I know that some people hate them, and think it's terrible that they're so prevalent in interior design today ... I understand where you're coming from - I do. But, I love them.

Oh, P.S., can you spot Salem the Cat in the picture above?

One chair has a simple antique brass directoire table for the occasional drink during a party, and the other chair has this great stepping stool I got for free! I know you're thinking so much stuff I get for free! LOL! I wasn't sure at first what I was going to do with this stool - but being super sturdy, I couldn't pass it up. I brought it back here, and held onto it for a while, before deciding that it made a fabulous library ladder of sorts.

It's styled with tons of my favorite design books, my two favorite Chinese stone parrots, and an old bread bowl filled with mercury glass beads.

The coffee table is styled so simply. I used two books, flowers, and my Ethiopian prayer beads, along with this great salt lamp candle holder. I love these salt lamps, and I had been looking all over for one just like this, when low and behold, my local grocery store had them for the Holidays. A score at $7.99, don't you think?

I made the ottoman in front of the fireplace out of the same Calico Corners fabric that I slipcovered the secretary chair in. It's finished with a french welt, and makes another great curl up spot for the cat. The basket story has already been told, but many of you didn't know that along with the stripes I painted CDLV (Casa de la Vanderdogan - the name of our home) and 423 (our anniversary 4/23) to mimic the old laundry baskets that are oh so expensive.

I was so excited that we got this into the photo of the living room during the photo shoot. It's really one of my favorite pieces in this room. Another of my favoite pieces is the secretary I got at an auction for just $225.

The secretary is actually a secretaire, since it doesn't have storage above, and is English - carved in Oak, but stained with a Jacobean stain. It's been in our foyer, our dining room, on the Nate Berkus Show, and now our living room. The chair is an old dining room chair I slipcovered, and the whole corner is anchored by this giant pub sign from London that Scott bought for me in Ohio.

The secretaire is styled with the cross bottles I made, a small french mirror, and some old rusted metal door pulley wheels on top - and a host of other items in the cubby's below. The silver books you see are actually sterling silver bound Torah. I've got coral and antlers, tree moss from Austin, Texas, and our little Mexian santos that's been in every room of the house. I actually should post his journey around CDLV. It's quite humorous.

And a larger open view - looking into the dining room. We use both of these rooms in tandem. We serve cocktails in the living room, and have the hour d'ouvers there, and then have dinner in the dining room, and desert and coffee back in the living room. The flow is excellent, and though we've been looking for another place to call home - we can't find anything that flows as nicely.

So, there you have it! The living room, and the way it relates to the rest of the rooms in the house. Up next, the foyer - and if you're interested in some of my cross bottles for your home, check out the website here:

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