A Love Seat for Eleanor's Room

We added a love seat to Eleanor's room this week and it's making us all pretty happy.

Eleanor directed as Aaron and I carried the love seat into her room.  When we set it down in her bay window, she pointed her finger and said, "Peeeerfect!" She then ran over to sit on it and exclaimed, "I like it!!"  I was surprised at just how into it she really was.  Maybe it's all the thrift store shopping she's had to endure her whole life finally paying off ;)

Since adding the love seat, Eleanor has found new ways to play in her room.  She has put me, Aaron and herself all down for "naps" on it (her favorite game) and we've already read several stories there.

A love seat was not always the plan for in here.  I love a piece of furniture with a story behind it so here's the story of how the love seat came to be...

We were originally needing a love seat for our living room and I searched for one for months.  The ideal situation was to find a steal on Craigslist that was the perfect style and dimensions and had upholstery in excellent condition.  As you might assume, that combo is nearly impossible to strike, especially when you actually are needing it.  So after six months of looking, I gave up and we bought a love seat from a store (which turned out great so it all works out :)).  

Of course, not too long after pulling the trigger on a new love seat, I found this cute little love seat for sale on Craigslist in Walnut Creek (my hometown, 2.5 hours away).  It was only $55 and for all my months of searching on Craigslist I knew that that kind of a deal doesn't come around too often.  

I was curious about what the legs looked like underneath the skirt so I emailed the seller and asked to see a picture of the legs.  A couple days later I got a text out of the blue from an unknown number that just had this picture, no accompanying explanations.

It took me a good thirty minutes to figure out what this picture was cause it looked super creepy at first.  And then I remembered the love seat and my e-mail.  I liked the idea of removing the love seat's skirt and since the legs looked good all systems were a go.

We no longer needed something for the living room, so I started thinking about other options throughout our house.  I've always planned to sell the yellow couch in our front room and replace it with something comfortable but smaller.  So I thought the love seat could work there.

I also thought about how we were going to need new seating in Eleanor's room once I moved her rocking chair to Ford's room.  And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a love seat would be the perfect solution for that room.   It would be so cozy to read books on it together, especially when we read scriptures as a family at night.  Plus, her bay window seems like the perfect opportunity for something really cute.  (You can see Eleanor's room's original set up here.)

So my wonderful mom and sister-in-law Chelsea went and bought the love seat for me.  My parents kindly stored it at their house for a couple months until this past week when my mom came to town and brought it with her.  

I was pretty persuaded to put it in Eleanor's room by this point anyways, but seeing it sit in our front room definitely confirmed that it was not meant for that room.  The small love seat was dwarfed by the vaulted ceilings and just looked silly there.  

Before putting it in Eleanor's room though, I wanted to deal with the skirt situation.  The love seat is very petite and the skirt just made it look bottom heavy and overly formal.  I have seen a couple examples of people removing the skirts and loved the outcome (here, here and here) so it didn't seem too hard. 

I'm usually a perfectionist about things and generally overthink everything.  When I saw that the staples would show around the legs I started brainstorming a variety of options with my mom on how to conceal them.

Ultimately though I gave up and just accepted that the staples would show and that I'm totally okay with it.  The upholstery has some stains on it so nothing is perfect about the love seat anyways and that's just fine.  In fact, it makes me all the less nervous to put it in a kids room where it will surely see some wear and tear. We can always reupholster it down the line.

Aaron got to work pulling off the staples and the skirt was off in just 10 minutes.

So now it lives in Eleanor's room, skirt free and happy :)

And that's the story of the love seat.

Since taking these pictures last week we put Eleanor's teepee back up in her room.  It's definitely feeling full now as it's not a very big room and it now stores a crib, dresser, loveseat and teepee.  I still need to figure out some sort of bookcase solution. I also hope to find a cute mirror for her room because she loves to check out her outfits in the morning (it's super cute when she stands there twirling in the mirror, such a girl).   And then there's the far distant dream of a colorful persian rug (like so) ;)

But I'm perfectly content with the state of things right now.  Every time I walk by the room and see that love seat I get happy :)