So when I said we finally had the living room we were hoping for, perhaps I jumped the gun a little bit.

In truth, I thought the rug was boring and didn’t fill out the space, both in size and design, the way I wanted it to; the coffee table, a holdover from our Brooklyn apartment and one that anyone who has ever shopped at Ikea has purchased at least once in their lives, was way too big for the space; and the lamp didn’t end up being the design element we had originally envisioned.

And so we made a few changes. I had been eyeing this coffee table from West Elm for a while, so we finally splurged and bought it. It’s Mid-century Modern in design, which matches the decor throughout the house, is smaller and lighter so it’s easier to move out of the way, and I just plain old like it.

The rug is a proper shag rug, off white, which I wanted, but with a funky triangle pattern in charcoal. The colors match the room, the pattern pops and helps complete the space, and it feels good on our feet.

And then there’s the matter of the lamp. This lamp is from the ’70s or early ’80s and came from my parents’ house. They gave it to us when we moved in since there was no light in the living room and we needed something until we found another one. It had been living in our garage since we purchased a lamp. I resurrected it and reconnected with my spray paint addiction by spraying this chrome to make it pop a little more than the bland color it was before. Admittedly, it’s a pretty crappy spray paint job, but this lamp was free and we even like the way it lights up the room better than the one we purchased.

A mid-century modern side table we found at a thrift store in Manhattan.

Will this be the end of designing the living room? Probably not. Is this the living room we were hoping for? Maybe?