We’ve made a little progress on the living room, I’m happy to say.

Since our small house has a small living room, our goal is to replace our current furniture, which came from our much-larger house, with furniture that is more appropriately scaled to a 12’ X 16’ room.

Until now, the television sat on a sofa table that took up almost the entire length of the wall. After much searching online, I found two tv stands that qualified for my desire for something that was somewhat taller and not as wide in hopes that proper scale with space around it would help give the room a more open feel.

I also wanted a tv stand that would hold our many DVDs without revealing them. (In a small room, the last thing you need is lots of miscellaneous stuff stored where you can see it.)

Ironically, we ended up having to choose between two polar opposites: a lovely oak Stickley media center and a nice-looking tv stand from Wayfair, which was not made of oak. But it was also narrower than the sofa table; meanwhile, the Stickley stand was almost the same width as the sofa table had been, but I chose to overlook that because the piece was so pretty.

We drove nearly an hour to see the Stickley piece, where we learned of its $2400 price tag. I would have been willing to pay that amount, except that as it turned out, the piece didn’t have a dedicated spot for a DVD player. Putting it on top of the stand would add to the look of clutter that I didn’t want. Putting it inside the stand meant we’d have to open the doors to play DVDs, but those doors would open into a traffic pattern.

Then the Wayfair stand went on sale for the ridiculously low price of $218, and we decided we had to give it a try. It arrived in a few days, having survived the shipping process with no dings or scratches, and it went together beautifully. We collected DVDs from the three areas in the house where we’d been storing them, and they all fit inside….and you can’t see them. Just what I wanted.

All the stand needs now is something to fill that empty spot under the DVD player. We had a boom box on the lower shelf of the sofa table, and we miss it. So we’re waiting on this system with Bluetooth, CD player and FM radio to arrive, and it will go in that spot. Can’t wait!