The Family Room: Fully Armed and Operational

This has been quite the process. For reference, here’s the starting point, from just before I closed on the house in June.It wasn’t pretty, and it went briefly downhill once I moved my stuff in.Since then, however, we’ve been on a slowly uphill climb towards a FINISHED ROOM! This may not sound that impressive after almost 5 months, so it may be a good time to reflect on what had to be done to get this far:

1. Rewire the house (I didn’t actually DO this part, but I did survive it and clean up the mess):2. Tear out the orange carpet, after subjecting it to multiple rounds of steaming and deodorizing:

3. Paint the ceiling:4. Fix the holes in the walls:5. Paint the walls (Mom helped here!):6. Buy and install new curtains and a new rug (or canvas drop cloth…):7. Whiten my teeth so I sparkle in selfies:8. Paint the floor:9. Refinish the silly looking coffee table (first step: dislodge the kitty):Check the very next post to see what I did to the coffee table. 😀

Basically, this room was a huge pain in the ass for a lot of reasons, such as the variety of different paints needed (floor, ceiling, flat wall, shiny paneling, accent wall, spray paint for the coffee table), constant distractions from other parts of the house (paint all the doors yellow!), and the fact that I am a real person with a job and a social life (kinda).

Here’s the finished (except for one teensy, weensy detail) product:(The teensy, weensy detail is that there’s nothing on the GIANT WHITE WALL. There will be soon, just as soon as I can complete it.)

Speaking of stuff on the walls, I have two options for the accent wall behind the couch/dry bar. I’m looking forward to hearing your opinions! I’m totally torn.

Option 1: Wooden thingy I bought at the ReStore todayIt’s white, but it’ll definitely be painted a more interesting color or colors (suggestions welcome!) in good time.

Option 2: Colorful triangles This thing has been EVERYWHERE. It began it’s life in the bathroom of my old apartment, got repainted like 10 times, and has been cycling through rooms ever since. It probably needs to come down about a foot… Protip: don’t hang art without a friend or somebody to let you know when it looks dumb.

Please comment and let me know what you think! If you’re interested in the coffee table’s amazing transformation, check my next post. Also, watch for an exciting update soon concerning the nasty blue Formica of the pass through. I have big plans. 😀