The couch controversy and the credenza conundrum

I’m sure you’ve had many sleepless nights since I posted about our goal of moving our couch into our living room. Well I’m pleased to share that two weeks later, we finished every single task for the living room and finally moved our furniture upstairs!!

Those first few moments having our things back in our daily life felt so surreal—until I sat on our couch. This couch has been a point of contention between Jeremy and I ever since we met. Jeremy bought it back in his single days. It treated him well, but when I came into the picture I informed him that it was too soft, to slippery, and looks like a brown potato. So we agreed to buy a new couch once we moved into a more long-term home. I’ve been looking forward to replacing this couch for so long. I’m dreaming of soft, supple cognac brown leather, or maybe tufted velvet. I’ve been pinning a ton on my living room dream board, and I can’t wait to buy new pieces to make this room truly special.

So here we are, in our long-term home and we finally have some furniture in our living room and I’m realizing how hard it will be to fit my beloved mid-century credenza.

This piece of furniture is so special to me—it sat in my grandparents’ dining room for decades and they left it to me after they both passed away. It is so gorgeous, has open shelving to showcase beautiful items, AND it has a ton of storage space. The problem is there’s no where to put it in our living room! We made the room open concept so there’s only one solid wall remaining. The other wall is full of windows so we can’t put the credenza there without blocking the windows, and the rest of the room is wide open so a 6-foot tall shelving unit wouldn’t make sense in the middle of the space. What are we to do?

One solution is to split the credenza into two pieces and place the TV on top of one piece but where would the other piece go? We are considering putting the buffet-style bottom piece behind the couch (similar to a console table) but then I’m worried the room will look too crowded and the couch would be pushed too close to the TV.

Solution #2 would mount the TV on the wall between the two windows, with the credenza up against on the solid wall. This idea would totally work, but we are worried about watching TV with daylight streaming in from behind the TV—we’d need to close the curtains whenever we watch TV and that seems annoying plus would cut the room off from natural light.

The third option is to keep the two pieces stacked and place our TV on the credenza, effectively blocking a lot of the upper shelves and cabinet doors. This way we could keep it together as it was originally designed, push it up against the solid wall, AND avoid the sunlight problem in option #2. But how silly is it to block the top half of this phenomenal piece of furniture with a huge dumb TV?

What do you think we should do? I’m determined to find a solution so this piece will continue to bring me joy for years to come—and I welcome any suggestions.

Also, if you know of a sofa that is very firm with solid back support that’s less than 90” wide—I want to hear about it!