twin living rooms

This a picture of our living room. When we decorated it 23 years ago I adored it. I continued to adore it for another 15 years. Then I sickened of it and wanted to redecorate. I wanted to paint the walls goldenrod or terra cotta or french toast. I wanted that loud obnoxious wallpaper out of there. But B loves that wallpaper and doesn't want to get rid of it. So we fought for several years and then I stopped caring and then.....miraculously I started to kind of like it again.

See the afghan on the back of the sofa. My sister, Debbie, made that for me to go with the wallpaper. See the oil painting above the sofa. B and I bought that at a starving artist sale for $50. It was painted by X Rabous. I go on-line now and find very similar paintings by X that sell for around $1500 now.

The sofa is a Flexsteel and looks as new now as the day we bought it.

So I told B I could live with this room if we would buy decorative curtain rods and do something about the window treatments. I still think the picture over the fireplace is hung a little too high and now looking at the photo I think the X painting might make a better statement over the fireplace than over the sofa.

This weekend we went to the Lewiston Christmas House Walk. Historic homes owned by wealthy people offering them up for the weekend for plebians to tromp through. When I entered the living of one home, I could not believe my eyes.



There was our wallpaper in the exact same shades albeit slightly muted and a larger pattern. There was the same fabric on the sofa and the same dark walnut Ethan Allen furniture. The same color rug on the same color hardwood floor.



We don't own a baby grand or a grandfather clock



Their window treatments are much nicer than ours but their picture over the credenza doesn't hold a candle to X's oil painting. And we got some great ideas for window treatments from another house that we toured. Our dining room is open to the living room and is painted a color that is similar to coffee with lots and lots of cream in it. It has the same green crown molding around the ceiling. B is going to let me paint the dining room a shade of gold that can be found in the wallpaper. We will keep the sheers, buy decorative rods and I'm going to sew panels for just the ends of the windows out of the fabric that I bought 23 years ago to make draperies for these rooms and that has been in a huge roll under our bed ever since. We are combining our ideas and I think we are going to come up with something we both like.