On this cloudy Monday, welcome to my dining room. It's kind of a cloudy room, now that I think of it: almost absolutely north-facing, inclined to be dreary when the weather is that way. When we bought the house, this room was so dark green it was almost black, which did not make it a cheerier place to be. It's now Linen White, which is not exciting, but does develop a lovely golden glow in lamplight and harmonizes well with various natural-wood tones.
So today the issue was this bench:
We've had it ever since we've lived in this house. It was part of a whole parcel of furniture given us by a Catholic priest friend, to which we said thank you very much. We weren't sure we wanted this bench. It's a little curlicue for our aesthetic. It also used to be upholstered in a very dainty pale-blue damask that looked old-ladyish when it was new, and then got stained. Over the years, the bench has traveled around the house, upstairs, downstairs, upstairs again, looking for a place to belong. After our oldest daughter moved out, it came to rest at the foot of the bed in what had been her room, but is now my husband's office, until he declared that he wanted it gone.
So, first I thought we'd donate it to Goodwill or Habitat or something, but it seemed a little too nice for that. Then I thought maybe I'd refurbish it and sell it on Facebook Marketplace. This was a thought I held onto for some time.
"What are your plans for that bench?" my husband said recently, or words to that effect.
"Oh, um," I said.
Again we went through the possiblities. I could call Habitat and get them to come take it away, I said. In fact, that was what I had resolved to do, until I read that they don't accept furniture with stained upholstery. That was when I remembered that I had these huge lengths of green silk moire, which used to swathe our bedroom windows, and which I'd subsequently employed as tablecloths for our long, narrow, refectory-style dining-room table. I haven't bothered with tablecloths on that table in a long time, though, and there was all this free fabric, just sitting there.
Yeah, so what's actually happened is that I ran out of staples and ended up just safety-pinning the fabric at the corners of the seat, and there it is. Can't really sell it until that's resolved. Don't really want to donate it. So I brought it downstairs and moved the church pew, which used to occupy that spot on the wall beneath the framed photograph, to the window. If we ever have a party again, we have plenty of seating in the dining room, oh boy, do we ever.
I don't think it looks bad, though.
Our whole house is pretty eclectic, anyway. I have no idea what kind of decor I would have if I'd just gone to the furniture store and bought stuff. Everything we own, just about, is some kind of hand-me-down or curb find or something. We didn't choose it; it chose us. Meanwhile, we do have all these chairs. The two flanking the fancy bench are virtually unsittable, truly the chairs you offer your worst enemy when he comes for dinner, and I do not know why we have them, but we do. They look nice. And the bench looks nice grouped with them. Now I'm pondering recovering the seat with some funkier kind of fabric, since we seem to be hanging onto it after all, but in the meantime, the green moire is clean and far less chilly and fussy than the former pale-blue damask. It'll do for now, and it's not cluttering up the office.
Speaking of reclaimed things, I had put this thrifted J. Jill ramie sweater in the outbox (again), but pulled it out (again) today.
The weather's cooler, though not cold: mid 70s through this week. I wanted a little something over my dress, but not too much something. The shape is a bit boxy, but the colors are nice. Here's me trying haplessly not to blink right as the camera timer goes.
Revising my novel, pondering my first children's-literature column, making spaghetti for dinner: that's my day.