Saturday, December 20, 2008

New Home Sweet Home - Dining & Livingroom

We cleaned things up nice and took pictures of the apartment. Since it is a little on the small side, it gets cluttery fairly fast - especially if you are the cluttery type, which we are. We have a nice built-in hutch which gives us some extra storage space. There are 4 drawers (3 that work) with a cupboard on each side. A company called CMC (Chicago Manufacturing Company) built the furniture. The woman that owns the company, Yinka, lived in Chicago for many years. Our table is 36" square.
It doesn't look all that tiny in this picture because I am standing in the doorway. The Church bosses in Ghana had planned on putting 2 loveseats in the livingroom, but I felt that would be too cramped, so I requested a chair and a loveseat. Boy am I glad. I really like the area rug that they chose for us. The air conditioner is up near the ceiling to the right of the window. That is how the a/c units look here. This one is pretty nice. At our old apartment, when the power went off (10-12 times daily) you had to go and turn the a/c back on. This new one just comes back on when the power returns. Cool deal (punny)
I got to choose the fabric for our furniture. This little flower print just kept calling my name. They love to do the mix and match look here on upholstered furniture, so I let them put a solid seat and pillow. I'm not sure if I like it a lot, but it is too late to change my mind now. They did a funny thing with all of the loveseats and chairs that they made for the building. They stuffed the back pillows way too much. We have all had to unzip the covers and open up the liners and remove the chunked up foam rubber the pillows are stuffed with. They look and feel better now. You can see that Kurt can't really sit comfortably on it at all. He takes the back pillow totally off. I'm shorter, so I don't mind it much.

The wall hanging is a batik made by Ojo. He lives up in Ibadan. It is stuck up on the wall with rolled up pieces of scotch tape. I stuck the clock up on the wall in the hutch with rolled up pieces of duct tape. It held for a couple of weeks, and then came crashing off. The glass smashed into pieces. I taped the back of the clock back on and remounted it with more duct tape. It's not as heavy now, so I think it will stay up this time. The walls are concrete, so you can't just hammer in a little nail to hang things.
I got to draw up the plan for the little entertainment center. I was excited that I got a new flat-screen TV to go with it. We brought our little dining table from the old apt. to use as our computer desk. We used to have a big table, but this one actually works pretty good. Our drapes were custom made by a lady named Winnie. I like them. They are a cream color (very pale yellow) and are the same color as the walls.

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