it all started with a rug...

I will just start with a quick flood update: The water around our house has gone down, but we are still cut off from town. At 7am it was still up about 2m, so hopefully it will be down by late this afternoon, but definitely by tomorrow morning we will be able to get into town.
Our phone was out yesterday, probably due to the lines being submerged but is working today.
We were able to change the dates of our holiday, so will now go Friday.
B1 will still be here as he will be working .
Now to the post that I started a few days ago and am only now finishing:

Isn't funny how the purchase of just one thing can domino into a whole new room makeover?

The other week I was in Bunnings and happened to go past their rug section.

I have never been happy with the rug that I bought from IKEA a couple of years ago when we bought the sofas and desks etc. 

It was cream and was forever dirty, then we would take it outside and hang it on the fence to clean it and several weeks later it would make its way back into the lounge room 

(that's what we call a living room here in Oz).

 When I saw a rug with some grey in it and it was nice and fluffy- something that I knew VCH would like and it was quite neutral, I took down the measurements and came home to make sure it would fit OK, 

and it did, 

so on my next trip to Bunnings I bought it.

On the same day I happened to pick up two butterfly cushions from Big W.

 So here is our lounge room now.

 You will see throughout the photos how the little kids school desks fit around the outside of the lounge room.

 You can see the things on B4's desk behind the lounge next to the fire (that's the big black pole you can see.

We will turn the sofa back around to under the window in winter to open the fire place up to the rest of the room.

The coffee table with the little stools under it is acting as a corner table between the two sofas at present.

 I recovered two of the four ottomans I scored the other day in this pretty greige and white  floral fabric.

 I made a couple of new cushions in some leftover fabric from the entry way cushion that goes nicely with the large butterfly.

Here you can see the opening into our dining room and the kids desks on one side and the bookshelf on the other.

I made some new covers for the large floor cushions, one in the floral and one in a stripe.

While I was going I made some new stripy curtains and a butterfly cover for this chair.

I am deciding what to do with this chair.

It belonged to my grandparent's and was the very first piece of furniture I ever did up.

It was my first year of College and I wanted it for my bedroom in the unit I was living.

So I carefully sanded it back and gave it two coats of a mahogany stain.

It never quite got to my unit and ended up being used by my mum as her phone chair until she went into an aged care facility.

You can see how on the front there is a little wear from feet resting on it,
but other than that it is still in good condition,
not bad seeing as I did it about 27 years ago- that makes me sound really old doesn't it!

The kids have been tying each other up to this chair all week with skipping ropes and seeing how long it takes to escape from!

I was going to paint it white a couple of years ago,

 but when I was at a solicitor's office and mentioned that I had a chair the same as the ones in his office, 

 he proceeded to tell me that they were quite rare and from America, 

 I decided that maybe I shouldn't paint it after all.

Now three years later I am back to the same question.

I bought some nice greige paint to match the fabrics in the room and thought I could paint it as I don't like it with the other timber in the room- I sometimes debate about painting them too- but it all seems like too much hard work!

But I am still hanging back, I did an internet search and found that it is a Windsor, low back captain's chair and was probably made from oak- I had previously thought it was cedar-but that is probably because nearly everything old in this area is made from cedar, as this area was founded on cedar logging, 

but if it came from elsewhere then probably not.

I found a few examples of exactly the same chair but could not find a value though
- no matter where I looked.

So I am back to the dilemma- do I or don't I?

My other option would be to strip it back and just wax it?

What do you think?

If you would like to see a previous view of my lounge room go here:

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