Cassis's Profile

Where were you four months ago when I painted my living room peacock blue? (I love it.) Looking forward to this series!

Your kitty matches your pillows. Perfect!

That wallpaper is stunning. And can I ask about your bedding?

I adore that mirrored lamp on your dresser--can you source it?

That is fantastic.

I tried to use the stainless paper to cover a plain plastic trash can to make it look shmancy, and it was a nightmare. I could not get it to lie straight without wrinkles at all. Did anyone else have this problem? How did you solve it?

Yes! I love therainbow "Everything Is Shit" print too. Did Rohde make that too? Is it for sale somewhere?

I love these chairs and find them comfy but I do have to agree they are not too flattering to people sitting in them.

Holy moley. They really don't want you to paint that?

Mostly echoing what everyone else said but also: when I saw your rooms I immediately thought, This is a job for the ubiquitous Expedit! (You have enough other Ikea pieces that I'm assuming you have some Ikea access.)

Move the desk out of the living room, and on that wall put the biggest Expedit you can find/afford/fit--it looks like you might even be able to fit the 5-by-5-cube or 4-by-4 with a 2-by-4. This will give you some height on that wall, and more important, all of your craft supplies, office supplies, and whatever else lives in all the boxes, crates, and baskets will go in the bottom two rows of the Expedit, COVERED. (If you can't afford a bunch of their little drawer/door units, which are getting pretty pricey at $20 or $30 a pop, use a nice plain neutral fabric.) All your books, pretty tchotchkes, and what looks like a camera collection go on the top two rows. Remove/sell all the half-height bookcases. If you love the wicker etagere, find another place for it, maybe in your bedroom, or against the wall we can't see in the dining room, which you're going to gain access to when you get rid of one of the tables and move the other into the center of the room.

Since it looks like you'll still have room to walk if you put the larger couch facing the TV, switch the two couches. I love the shape of the little orange one and think it will be nice framed by the window. If it's structurally sound, that is something that can go with you forever--eventually you can get it reupholstered in something lovely, like a silvery velvet, but it's fine for now. Try to float it into the room at least a few inches.

As others have said, put the red rug in the dining room and get a new smaller rug for the living room, preferably something with a bit of orange to go with the little couch. Urban Outfitters has cheap, bright 5-by-7-ish rugs in the $50 to $90 range.

Put the white floor lamp in the corner between the two couches so you have a reading light. The little table lamp can go on the desk when you move that to the dining room. The stand it's on can be a plant stand. The cat bed can live behind the white couch. I can't tell if that's a sofa table or another half bookcase behind the orange couch; in any case, if it's not too wide you can keep it and put ONE basket on it for TV remotes, etc.

New cushion for the wicker chair, picking up the orange. (As someone said above, the chair would also be pretty brightened with paint.) The orange pillows on the white couch; the white pillows on the orange one. It would be nice to add another accent color or two in the textiles (rug and cushions).

In the dining room, choose one of the tables and sell the other. Keep the cute red chairs; if you choose the rectangular table, keep the white wicker (?) chair--if not, either move it into the living room to replace the current wicker chair or get rid of it.

Do you really need/use all the desk area of the corner desk? If so, it goes into the corner of the dining room; if not, pick half of it and put it against the wall opposite the window. It might help unify it with the other furniture if you paint the top (red? white?). Eventually, you can swap it out for a simple parson table or even one of those schoolboy desks with the drawers on either side that you can paint. The idea being that if you do have people over, you can remove the desk chair and have the piece double as a sideboard. (Do you work at the desk enough to need the ergo chair? If not, just use one of the red chairs instead.)

Finally, as everyone else has said, remove or change the dining room tapestry to something lighter/brighter. I'm assuming that's where the bike lives all the time, so maybe you can even find a way to hang a new tapestry a few inches into the room so you can slip the bike behind it. Or rasterbate a giant poster to cover up most of the wall (if you have artwork it would make a great gallery wall, but it doesn't look like you do).

To prioritize, budgetwise: 1) Expedit (covered storage); 2) textiles (living room rug, tapestry, cushions); 3) replacement of some sort for the computer desk.

I can definitely see a fun, cozy boho/hippie vibe in your stuff, and I think you just need some paring/rearrangement to get there completely. Would love to see "after" pictures of the room.