A couple weeks ago I decided that I couldn’t stand our couch for another day. Not only that, but we also needed to get additional seating, a nice love seat let’s say, to round out our living room furniture. This led to weeks of obsession, searching websites, visiting local stores and basically doing a lot of hand-wringing.

The more I looked, the more I liked our current couch. It is just the right size for our narrow living room, such a nice color and the right mid-mod period. Maybe I can live with the couch, but what about a love seat? I keep coming back to this ridiculously over-priced, tiny sofa, from DWR, the Poet Sofa. It is just lovely and comfortable, and the right size to add couple more seats to the room but no way am I ever getting that couch.

After careful measuring, I determined that the ideal love seat for us would be 60 inches long. In looking at some of my other favorite furniture makers, like Gus and Thrive, I discovered that modern sofas are hardly ever made in the 60 inch range. Chairs get as wide as 40 and sofas get as narrow as 76. Can you hear the sighing, the exasperation? Was there no solution???

I went back to a broader search and found a new term for love seat, “settee”. Presto! A settee is a small couch with most being around 60 inches. Why these aren’t love seats or sofas is still a mystery. Right now my top pick Settee is the Elton from West Elm. I’d get it in yellow velvet. Ofcourse, I still need to try sitting on it first, which means a trip to Chicago. There is no instant gratification for the furniture shopper.

Just finding a potential solution has calmed my obsession for now. Last week, in the very depths of the search I started to wonder if I had a problem, a furniture obsession problem. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, searching for an answer. SB pointed out that this happens to me every year and every year it ends when a new piece of furniture arrives in our home. I begin to grumble about this or that furniture need around January and by April I’ve purchased something. At first I denied that this is my pattern, but looking back through the blog proved SB right. Maybe this is my cabin fever, the furniture itch.

I did end-up buying a couple items for the living room last week… More on that soon.

Instead of a traveling adventure this fall, we are embarking on an expedition of home improvement. The garage siding is literally crumbling off the garage, like rotting paper. Starting today and through this week of vacation, we will be tearing it all off and replacing it with fiber cement siding. Then comes the fun part, instead of sticking with the white on white on white of our house, it is time for some more color.

The third blue from the left, “Mood Indigo” has come out the winner. That will be the main color and the trim will be white. Next spring we will bring the blue color onto our house by painting the trim and shutters the same Indigo. It would be lovely to paint our whole house that color, but we have 30-year-old white vinyl. I read that painting light colored vinyl a dark color can cause it to warp and deform, plus then suddenly the siding would go from no maintenance to high maintenance.

In addition to the siding project, SB is out in the yard right now, digging a trench for a french drain. Last spring we had some water in our basement because of poor drainage in our side yard and this may solve the leaky basement problem. We saved all the gravel from our front hedge and will be using that to build out the drain.

It may not be Paris but the drain is French. I’m still calling it a vacation.

The stairwell and upper hallway…Obviously we are struggling to find the right color. I had originally wanted red but with the wood colors of the floor and trim, the red does not sing, plus there was a lot of concern about “darkness”. How about something brighter, cheerier, like a yellow? The color of goldenrod or…mustard? Eh, it just doesn’t work at all. After living with the red and yellow blocks for months, we went back to the beginning and came up with a shadowy purple. It seems to make the wood work gleam and has a soothing, rich, modern feel.

The color we have agreed on is the slightly darker of the two purples pictured above. It is called “Mystic Mount”. While I was painting the sample squares I was thinking about the name…mystic mount… Obviously the most well known mystic mount is the unicorn. But how is SB going to feel about unicorn colored walls? Also, isn’t it strange..when I think unicorn I don’t think purple. Unicorns, they are all sparkles and white and pink.

When I mentioned this to SB he pointed out that mount could also refer to mountain. Oh!!! Like mountains seen in the distance. Like purple mountain majesty. Huh, I guess that makes more sense than unicorns.

What does my lovely paint color book say about purple/lavender paint:

Lavender is the new beige. From lilac to amethyst, it’s an extraordinary neutral and a great unifier — a soothing, peaceful color that is timeless. Lavender reflects light well, which is why you see it all over Scandinavia. In the depth of winter, it’s a very cheerful color to walk into. We pulled this lavender from the evening sky and summer flowers like lilac and lupine. In the bright sun, it takes on a warmth that brings out the red in the purple, but then as the light fades, it cools down and becomes this beautiful blue.

Instead of unicorns I’m going to try picturing the evening sky, summer flowers and misty mountains.

In Paris I found us this great little flat for the week, an efficiency with a double bed, two chairs around a small table and a modern kitchenette. The owner gave us a walking tour of the neighborhood when we arrived and described the Paris housing market. He said our flat would be a very normal size for a young couple’s first home. Based on realty listings we saw in store windows, the flat would probably sell for around $200K euro for 100 square feet.

After a week of pondering how we would fit our stuff and our pets into such a small space, walking into our Madison house came as a shock. The living room alone is was the size of our entire flat in Paris. Coming into our house with fresh eyes, my first reaction was that of emptiness. The walls are still bare of art and the furniture seems sparse. All the “empty” rooms emphasized how big the house is. Wow, we are rich with house. I’m impressed with all that we have.

Buying our Madison house, our second house, has not had the glamour of our first house and we’ve approached owning it as more project than success story. Since moving in I don’t think I’ve really appreciated the house. I haven’t loved it the way I loved our Atlanta house. All I see is problems and projects. It has been hard to see the whole for all the details. With these fresh eyes I can now appreciate living here and approach house projects with more nonchalance because, after all, it is already a very nice house. (Now we just need to get some art on the walls!)

* The photo is of Napoleon III’s palace apartment at the Louvre.

“Where’s the cat?” That’s my title for the above photo. We are officially moved!

A week ago, our landlady called and asked us to move out 10 days early, giving us 6 days to move all our stuff and clean the apartment. It was the week when Madison was 90 degrees and 90% humidity everyday, the very hottest week of the year. Our schedule quickly became: haul heavy stuff in the morning, lunch, nap, haul lighter but still heavy stuff at night, collapse, rinse and repeat.

Since we only moved a block, we didn’t do much pre-packing and we simply rented an open bed trailer, making small trips back and forth. I learned that even if you are just moving a block, it still means you have to pick-up every item you own. And man do we own a lot of stuff!

Sunday night, apartment clean and keys turned in, it seemed unreal that we actually own and live in this house. It feels so very fancy after our ill-kept apartment with the bathroom from hell and a kitchen from purgatory. I’m so happy to be done with that place. Yay!

Now to begin the unpacking. Our goal this time around: Throw stuff out (or sell it for cheap)!