About a month ago, we bought a house (a nice sunny one, with a little pond out back). When we moved in, we noticed how cheap, sparse, and generally inadequate all our furniture was. It looked fine back in our rental…

We’ve since picked up some more/better furniture, some at yard sales, some through friends, and some at stores.  Much of it is temporary, but it will serve until we can afford to incrementally replace it with stuff we really like.  It’s looking a bit better, but there’s still another pressing issue.

Despite the diligence of my girlfriend (and as a direct consequence of my own lazi-/busy-ness), we are still living out of boxes, stepping around boxes, and just generally using boxes as our main decorative motif. Our screened-in porch, a feature we’d hoped to use for evening dining and daytime lounging, sadly became a storage facility. But no more! Today, we motivated ourselves to clear it out, and we are putting up the funky retro 70s table, chairs, and bench that she got years ago for $50 and never had a place to use. It’s cast-iron and lime pleather and wood (and something made to resemble wood), and I think that it will be a nice accent to a house built in a rather late-70s style. Disclaimer: make no mistake, I lived through the 70s, and have no nostalgia for the hideous styles that oozed out of the drug-addled minds of designers of that era. But there’s no denying it, this house has touches of that time. But in a good way!

So this weekend, in addition to my finishing up some critical stuff for work, we plan to get this place is some sort of presentable order. Just in time for our trip abroad.