This last summer we finally got rid of an old, dirty, smelly, scratched leather couch that we had gotten for free from one of Britton’s friends when we first moved into our house nearly 9 years ago (nine years!!?!). Schnoodle had used it as a bed, and Kitty as a scratching post, and it was already a little dirty when we first got it as it WAS after all from a bachelor pad. We had been meaning to do something with it for the longest while, but weren’t sure what to do with it. When our HOA hosted a free roll-away dumpster, we knew we should take advantage of it to get rid of the old thing.

You can see part of the couch in this old picture

But since then, our upstairs living room has been completely empty save for all of our tropical indoor houseplants. Whenever someone comes in, they ask us when we moved in, or when we were moving since it was so barren it looked like we were unsettled. And since we had Puerto Rico on the mind we sorta were.

Our Bare Upstairs Living Room for the last 6 months

Finally, this weekend I convinced Britton that we should at least have a small amount of furniture in the living room to make it seem more inviting. I knew it would be hard to have money leave our pockets but we did pretty good and spent only about $400 on the whole set up (we already had the side table and lamp). We figured would could get by with just two sitting chairs and a rug. That would at least make it feel warm and they would be easy to sell and/or transport when we are ready to move for good to PR.

AFTER- Our Hotel Lobby Living Room

It’s also nice to have somewhere to sit to put on my shoes in the morning instead of hopping around by the doorway. Since we don’t have a TV or anything upstairs, I think it looks sort of like a tropical hotel lobby, which is fine by me.