This post was sponsored by Brightech. All thoughts and opinions remain my own. This post contains links to websites outside of LostandFoundDecor.com. These links are provided for your convenience to help you find the products I mention in this post. Shopping through these links will not cost you any extra money, but it does help support this blog. Thanks for the love!
Welcome back to Part 2 of my budget-friendly living room update!
If you missed Part 1, you can find it here!
I shared last week how my living room has been a work in progress, ever since we finally hired a painter to come in and repaint our giant 2-story walls from a pale, dingy yellow to a nice, light gray.
Changing the wall color from a warm to cool tone wreaked havoc on the rest of my decor!
I went into a slight panic mode, thinking I was going to have to buy all new furniture to make the space work with the gray walls.
Ya’ll know I’m super frugal though and so spending $$$$ on a whole new living room suite was out of the question.
So I decided to flea market shop, paint, and budget-buy my way to a new living room, starting with the TV stand makeover from last week’s post.
The next step in bringing the room together was to tie the blue tv stand and green couch together, and the best way to do that was with a new area rug.
I really loved the original rug we had–I bought it from Pottery Barn 10 years ago after saving up for it for a long time!
It has a beautiful pinky/red background with light a light blue and gold vine pattern.
It was great quality–nice and thick–but after 10 years and 3 boys, it had seen better days.
Plus, the warm hues just wouldn’t work with the new color direction of the space.
I would say that 85% of the furniture in my house is used, in some fashion–handed me down, bought off Craigslist, or found at a flea market.
There are a few things though that I feel like you should buy new, rugs being one of them. And when you buy a rug, you want one that is good quality–soft, thick, and smooth.
So my dilemma was where to find a good quality, but still affordable rug . . . Well, thanks to Amazon I was able to find just what I needed!
10 years ago when I was rug shopping, Amazon still just sold mostly books! But now, you can find some really amazing decor deals there, like this gorgeous, vintage-inspired rug by NuLoom.
I paid a little over $200 for the 8 x 10 size, which was less than even half the cost of my old Pottery Barn rug!
Because it was so inexpensive, I was worried it would be stiff, thin, and generally poor quality. But it’s not!
It’s really soft and has a good thickness.
All the little ones (kids and animals) in my house enjoy laying on it 🙂
And the colors are nice and vibrant.
So . . . a success! It ties the green couch and blue tv stand together quite well, and lightens up the room a lot too.
Besides replacing the rug, I also needed a new lamp. I am not a fan of using overhead lighting, so my house is filled with lamps!
The old lamp we had next to the TV looked nice, but it was a cheap clearance rack, discount-store buy.
And unfortunately, with lamps, I’ve learned that a cheap lamp is usually a short-living lamp.
Eventually, the base on this lamp literally broke off from the pole and concrete dust and fragments started falling out of the base–it was a mess!
I had been on the hunt for a new, nicer lamp (that wouldn’t self-destruct), but was balking at the multiple-hundreds of dollar price tags I kept seeing on all the ones I liked.
Why oh why are nice lamps so darn expensive??
Then, along came my lucky day!
I was contacted by Brightech , an online lamp and lighting company. They wanted to offer me one of their lamps to try in my home and I found the perfect one for my space–the Ava lamp.
It fits perfectly in the space next to my TV stand and is as sturdy as they come.
In complete honesty, I am super impressed with their product, as well as the lamp’s price tag–only $89.99!
Not only is it sleek and elegant, but I like how it can adjust to different heights and serve multiple purposes–ambient lighting or a reading light!
They have a whole selection of floor and table lamps on their website, all with very reasonable prices.
I did have to do some assembly on my lamp, but it was simple.
The lamp (including a nice, LED light bulb) showed up at my house packaged in a flat box:
The electrical cord was already run up through the base and poles, I just had to screw them all together.
Everything fit together seamlessly and assembling it all took me no more than 5 minutes.
The base is also very heavy, which is great because it means my kids won’t be able to accidentally knock it over!
The shade also required some assembly, but again went together really quickly!
The shade itself was rolled up inside this box,
and all I had to do was unroll it, then attach the clips on the shade to the wire frames.
Once it was all attached to the frame, the ends velcroed together. Easy peasy!
So yes, I really am impressed with this lamp!
It feels nice and sturdy, the finish arrived in great condition and the assembly was a cinch. And all for under $100 🙂
I think it looks fantastic next to my TV stand!
I’m really happy with how my room is coming together! I still have a bit of work to do on the other side of the room, but so far, so good.
I hope you’ve been inspired by my little project to be creative in your own space.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you have to blow the budget to redecorate!
A big thank you to Brightech for the Ava lamp, and if you would like to see more of their selection you can do so here:
And you can see a whole selection of affordable, NuLoom rugs on Amazon here: