Summer Decorating Project

That week just flew by for us! On Monday I was having lunch with a colleague, and then all of a sudden it was Friday night. How did that happen?

I guess the big thing this week was that my friend Joyce and I started brainstorming how to makeover the patio room. This will be yet another transformation out there. There have been so many over the years. When we talked about doing a project together several months ago, I was thinking I'd like to focus on my bedroom. But last week the sofa in the patio room was damaged beyond repair in an incident with the cat, and that made it necessary to concentrate on the patio room first.

After removing the sofa, here's what the room looks like:

As you can see, the kid and the cat currently have the run of the place. I'm not planning on kicking them out, but I do want the room to serve two purposes. First, I want another sofa in the room for a little sitting area. I've decided on the Ektorp love seat from IKEA. I am already planning to replace my living room sofa with the Ektorp sofa. The Ektorp pieces are great because they are slipcovered, and the covers can be washed (and bleached) in the washing machine at home. That's a huge plus for a home with kids and pets. I also think they look nice and fit my style:

So that's my huge design idea for the room. Joyce is really driving the creative end of the project, and she's donating a cute table and chairs so that the room can also be used for dining. Her table and chairs are so nice, and they will give us an alternative to eating in the kitchen. We usually do eat in the kitchen, but it does get hot in there if the oven has been on.

Joyce has the cutest house and a real knack for decorating. She's also very, very thrifty. In fact, we spent some time at the Goodwill earlier this week, and I scored brand new pillows for the sofa and a brand new lamp for about $24 total! You just can't beat that. Then we went over to Hobby Lobby and picked out some fabric to recover two of the chair seats. She reminded me to pull up a Hobby Lobby coupon for 40% off, and we walked out of there with a yard and a half of fabric for under ten bucks.

We are full of motivation and ideas, but shorter on time and funds for everything we want to do. I'm thinking we will finish this up over the next couple of months. I'll be sure to post the after pics!

To see how things are coming together, you can visit my Pinterest board for this project. Some pins there are for inspiration, and some are items I've purchased or hope to purchase.