Good Neighbors

After watching my uncle run the marathon and Dan catching up on sleep after his overnight for work, we took yesterday afternoon to go couch shopping! Since neither Dan or I is one to buy something without a deal, we headed back to the Harlem Roomplace Outlet center in Lombard that we had been to once earlier in the week.

After freaking out a bit about whether or not it would fit in with the color scheme I've been dreaming about for months, I decided that I could paint just a shade darker than I was originally planning and we settled on this couch (without the pillows):


Being the outlet, you buy your furniture "as-is" - most everything was a floor model at some point and just sat in the showroom too long and eventually ended up in the outlet. There were several of the same couch in the showroom, so for us it was just a matter of finding the one with the least amount of scratches and marks on it. We decided that having perfect cushions was most important to us, and choose one that just has some dings on the back, which nobody will see anyways since it's going up against a wall. It was listed for $337, while some of the others were $297... so I mentioned that I thought the one we were buying wasn't really in any better shape than the cheaper ones... and just like that, the salesperson told us we could have it for $297! I was excited - I absolutely LOVE a good deal. :)

We also went back to Value City Furniture and got the ottoman my mom and Manda helped me pick out last week:


I'm hoping it matches as well as I think it will, but we can return it if not.

Since I am quite obviously not the strongest person in the world, when we got home with the couch I wasn't exactly sure how Dan and I were going to manage to get it inside. Not to mention the fact that it barely fit through the door in the first place, which only made it more difficult to move! After a good 10 minutes of struggling, a car pulled up in front of the house and a guy about our age got out and said "Hey I live down the block and was driving past... saw you guys were having some trouble, can I help?" Are you serious?! I didn't know people that great actually existed! We thanked him and he took over for me, and in a few minutes he and Dan had gotten the couch through the door and on to the front porch where it will stay until I have the living room painted this week. It's a huge relief to me that so far everyone we have met in the neighborhood is really nice - and obviously helpful!

Dan and I also finished getting the linoleum tile up in the kitchen, as well as the subfloor, and got a good chunk of the hutch stripped down to the natural wood. Next steps for this week are to get a plumber, start painting, and get a floor refinisher in to help us figure out if the original wood in the kitchen is actually worth working with.