Renovate Brooklyn: The Tale of Our Ravishing New Rug.

As promised, here are some more photographs of our living room, with the new additions of the lovely oriental rug and snazzy new orange throw pillows.

It's kind of looking AH-MAZING, if I may toot my own horn, though these most recent changes are more thanks to The Mother Figure and serendipity than any skill of my own. I keep having this moment when I walk in and just have to pause to absorb the room. Really- I actually stop in my tracks. I just can't believe that this living room is my living room, in my funny, junk-ity tenement building in Brooklyn. I feel dunked in luck.

The tale of the rug: Oh-- the rug! Talk about a love affair.... If you remember rightly, when John and I first began renovating our apartment, I had pipe-dream plans to somehow purchase (steal?) an Oushak rug for the living room. At about $8,000.00 a rug, that was totally not happening, so I ended up springing for a (used $40.00 ikea) jute area rug instead. Which was just fine. Stunning? No. Arresting? I'd say not. But just fine. And the $7,960.00 difference made up for any of the jute rug's inadequacies.

But then a week ago, like the omniscient super-power that she sometimes seems to be, Mummy showed up at Fox Ridge with a (slightly thinning) oriental rug that she'd just removed from their study at home. It might have been too thin for them, but it was a gem to me! She thought I might be able to use it in the dining room at Fox Ridge, but- oh no- I had other plans. I mean, check out those colors! Oranges, neutrals, shades of glassy blue... It was like it was woven for our living room! And so, like the die-hard Do-It-Yourselfers that we are, we lugged it back to the city and rolled it out in the living room around midnight, the night before Mummy flew home. It was like I've said before: Sometimes you don't realize that something is missing until you add that perfect thing, and suddenly, the room just glows.

I'm telling you: Dunked In Luck!