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March Challenge Reveal: Family Room Update

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I started the process for this family room makeover last fall with ordering complete new furniture — everything besides the couch, and the file cabinet and bookcase we already owned in this case goods line. And also picking up this cute little vase from Value Village that I am absolutely in love with! Then I started painting it in January. Twice along the way, the fates threw a monkey wrench in the works which stalled me out for weeks each time. I guess I’m pretty susceptible to negative feedback!

However, I’ve pulled up my big girl panties and gotten back on the bandwagon and aside from getting the big window replaced and touching up a couple small paint spots, it is now livable and attractive!

Here’s the line up around the room of the new furniture, minus my husband’s desk and file cabinet that sit in the middle of the room. Somehow they got left out of the pictures altogether… eep!

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Edited in: Here’s the room, unpainted door trim and all, including hubby’s command center… and the trunk and window mentioned in the last paragraph. Sam suggested this. Insisted upon this. DEMANDED these ;) so here ya go! Note: flip-top bins contain the stuff for the file cabinet, which we don’t want to load until we’re sure we don’t have to move it for any cord/cable related issues!  

From the hall…

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The whole room from the right…

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The whole room from the left… 

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I love the paint colors I chose in this room. Love them L!-O!-V!-E! them! The green moves from yellowish to bluish depending on the light flooding in from outside, but mostly it is a beautiful soft, somewhat yellow undertone green. Benjamin Moore Fernwood. I recommend it! I am a Sherwin-Williams girl so I used their copycat formula. I didn’t know paint companies did that, but they do and this is a good match. My trim is a very slightly golden-ized white. (NOTE: the only painted trim you can see is the baseboard– door trim is just primed so far.) Since I am going to eventually be doing the whole house’s trim in this, I wanted a fairly pure white. The soft touch of warmth makes it perfect to me! It is Westhighland White, again from Sherwin Williams. 

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I’ll be raiding the silk flower departments everywhere I can to find artificial replacements for my splurge today. I got fresh flowers JUST FOR YOU! OK, I am enjoying them, too. I am loving the touch of hot pinks I decided on, and it overcomes all the reds that seemed so dominant from the games. Now those reds just seem like a trivial part of the busy mix of label colors. To me, anyway.

Previously, we had a combination of odds and ends of furniture including raw wood, cheap (and beat up) particle board, at least 5 different finishes, and my hubby’s desk was a small fold-up banquet table. Now he has a real, large, beautiful wood command center up against the back of the couch facing the TV. If he’s not at work or asleep, that’s where you will find him! 

Here is my new command center! Plenty of room for the house desktop AND my laptop, a landing surface for my food and for my coffee, a basket for all my crap, the 20+ year old tin from Schwann’s that is our wastebasket and that the kids won’t let me replace, and all the office needs at my fingertips.

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I’ve finally been able to move my cookbooks out of the living room/ entry and into a spot more accessible to the kitchen and browsing; the games that used to be in this spot are spread all over the place. I’m OK with the games being stacked here and there in this room; it is one of the “themes.” Games are a deal with us; we may not play them as often as some families, but our time spent playing together has created a lot of happy memories.

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The games that would fit behind the closed doors are behind them, so you aren’t necessarily seeing our most-played choices on display. Except Risk. Risk is a go-to game around here! 

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Back to the cookbooks… the bottom of that bookcase near the hallway is also filled :) This is after my bi-yearly purging :) (and apologies for the super weird light in this photo — beyond my editing skills!) I left a few of the beautiful cookbooks — the “coffee table books” style of cookbook — in my living room bookcase for show. It is weird to me to have so much shelf space and storage that I can actually decorate shelves as a priority instead of  just cramming stuff in as attractively as possible. Even our movies and Consumer Reports books can look awesome… 

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And then I got busy sewing! Remember my sneak peek earlier this week?  I had to have some new couch pillows! Again, I had a mismatched, old, and too-well-used pile of bland pillows and one Pendleton wool pillow that stood out like a sore thumb! Now I’ve got a start on some fun, colorful, coordinating *me* style pillows that make me SO happy!

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I’m planning a couple posts on these (including free patterns!) in the near future — stay tuned! Thanks to my mother-in-law for that little coffee pillow for my birthday last fall :) Love you, Pat!

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Still to do: paint touch up and a bit more trim, pictures above the computer (just couldn’t decide yet!) and washable sheer verticals with decorative panels over top after the window gets replaced. Hubby has to move (after purging) the 8,549 VCR tapes — maybe not quite that many —  into the TV cabinet, heh heh, and I will probably make a baby-proofing upholstered cover for the hard-edged handmade trunk that serves as our coffee table here. So quite a bit, but its all so easy to stay motivated when you walk into a fresh, functional, green-painted room! 

Special thanks to my friend Sandi for expert color advice and back up, and for that small kind voice of hers in my head that kept me on track! 

Have a great weekend! 

Gail  

  • admin - Yay!! New furniture! And new pillows!! And pretty flowers!! It’s like a grown-up house! (oh wait, that’s because you don’t have kids at home anymore, lol) Looks like it all came together awesome! -Sam/daughter/blog-patner05.30.2014 – 7:11pmReplyCancel

  • Kari - Wow Gail! Your space looks fantastic! Very serene and inviting. I am a fan of artificial flowers too. I tend to kill the real ones. Be sure to post if you find some good artificial ones. :)06.02.2014 – 11:57amReplyCancel

    • admin - Thanks, Kari! We’re loving living in it now that the room is finally put together! –Gail06.02.2014 – 9:39pmReplyCancel

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