DC30: Our Virtual Home

Looking at our condo, I realize how far we have gotten with furnishing and decorating and how far we still have to go. Working strategically room-by-room, my husband and I have tirelessly put together our living room, bedroom, office and dining area, trying to get the big furnishings in place and still working on the details. We also have a third bedroom that has yet to be touched except for storage of miscellaneous items, including artwork that still needs to be hung and our bikes. In addition, there is plenty of empty wall space and lots of remaining furnishings to be purchased all over the place. Since neither of us are great at DIY projects, our updates rely on saving enough money until we are ready to purchase the exact furnishings we have found by scouring catalogs and going through furniture stores.

This is our living room currently:

Why yes, that is a curious kitty entering my perfect shot on the bottom there! In case you're wondering, that is some good ole E! News on T.V. You can make out Guilana Rancic a little better in the first shot.

As you can see, right now it's fully furnished. But we've found that the living room furniture, the couch, lounge chair, ottoman, end table and coffee table take up so much more space than they had previously done in my husband's apartment. They're so big, only one end table fits in this room with this configuration. The other end table with matching lamp to the one shown above has been annexed to the third bedroom until we can find a permanent home for it. Also, the lovely indentations in the ottoman and on the top of the couch are due to the frequent cat napping in the same three spots.

A few things I love about this room are:

The comfort
The rug (a gift from my parents)
The lamp
The large windows
The remote controlled gas fireplace
The floor to ceiling windows and doors which exit to the patio
The wall sconces
The built in cabinets on either side of the fireplace
And the open layout -- you can even see the open doorway to the second bedroom/office space right off the living area

While I love it overall, there are a few things I wouldn't mind changing in the future:

Exchanging the glass top coffee and end table for round ones with non-glass surfaces -- I really love these tables and they look great, but the glass must be cleaned constantly from cat hair, dust, paw prints and fingerprints. It is also not very kid friendly (just thinking about the future!) with all those sharp edges. And dust gathers like wildfire, which is very hard to get rid of completely because the glass shows every individual piece of dust we may have missed when the sun shines on it!
The window shades. I like them too but the minute we moved in they stopped working. These would normally be the kind you could pull on and lock in place and then there is a small spot on the wall to tie up the remaining cord. But the locking mechanism stopped working on the two in the living room so now we hold them in place by tying the cord around the hook on the wall. Needless to say this is kind of a pain and the hook on the wall has been loosened several times by all the weight pulling on it and had to be refastened in the wall.
The over-sized leather couch and lounge chair. While they are super comfortable, they've sustained many cat scratches over the years due to the kitties running and playing around on them, particularly the large ottoman, and they're just a bit too big. If we did replace them though, a great thing about leather is that it is much easier to clean cat hair off of than any other material so another leather couch or chair in a slightly smaller size would definitely be an option. That being said, I don't see this happening anytime soon. These are just too good to give up and would be perfect for a man cave in any future home :)
I'd also probably add in a cat friendly plant or two and a small console table under the second sconce. It's so ridiculous to think how many plants are poisonous to cats and why they would still try to eat them! How do these guys survive on the streets? One of my cats gets riled up whenever I eat a spinach salad or fruit and has been known to get up on the dining table and eat part of a spinach salad when no one was looking until a guest pointed her out. It was very funny and cute but very, very naughty!

As you can tell my design revolves a little bit around the cats because I have to account for the amount of hair and scratching furniture can sustain. That being said, we always end up buying the things we really like regardless of the potential damage in the future, but that is always a consideration. I mean, you can't account for everything or revolve your style around two little fuzzy napping vandals.

While playing around with interior design features, I found a template that looked a bit like our condo's living room. Once I discovered this, I couldn't stop until I re-created a look similar to our place, with a few updates and changes here and there. Notice the different furnishings below. I also couldn't resist including a light fixture in the style that I loved but which my husband absolutely did not. Since this is our virtual home, I had the only say in the design and I said this light stays!

What do you think of this virtual place compared to the real one? I really love the gray couch, the white tufted chair and ottoman (if only they were cat hair/scratch proof!) and the lighting fixture!