Home Design Cool

Hello and happy Halloween! I hope your forecast is better than ours! We’ll be heading out after school to get the kiddo some new long underwear for this evening. It may be a quick trip around the neighborhood tonight! :)

Thank you SO much for the love on our family room, not only here but on Instagram and Facebook as well. I truly, truly appreciate when you take the time to comment – it doesn’t go unnoticed!

At the end of of each month I like to recap some of my favorite posts – it’s a nice way to see what I’ve accomplished and catch you up if you missed a post. I’m definitely planning to slow my roll a bit for the rest of the year -- November and December are going to be unusually busy for us. So I’m looking forward slowing down the projects…cleaning and decluttering my house and decorating for the holidays sounds amazing! I can’t not do DIY, I love it, so I’ll still be working on things here and there of course.

Before I go into the recap I wanted to share that I’ve updated the “Our Home” page – some of the photos were a bit dated and I rearranged some things too. I’ve also added a Projects tab at the top of the site that includes some of my favorite decor, projects, tips and recipes over the years. I try to update that at least every couple of weeks so there’s always new sections and links popping up.

OK – to start the month I addressed the naked windows in the dining room/library. They had shades but no drapes so I took care of that:

The drapes were from our living room windows and they look SO much better in here. I still can’t believe how much warmer it feels in there – it’s a little thing but it made a big difference. I have some more updates of that room to share soon!

Next up I shared the ways I decorate our walls/fill them without using art:

That planked wall cost me less than $50 and it’s one of my favorite projects ever! I’m all about easy ways to add character to our home and this does it.

I’m so excited about the potential for our kitchen and thrilled with the table and it’s new spot. I had fun decorating it for a fall table setting:

Can’t wait to show you that same space with the new doors and board and batten on the walls! I think it’s going to look so good!

I did a little fall nesting throughout the rest of the house as well and warmed up the bedroom fireplace a bit:

That fireplace is one of the many things I fought my husband on hard when we built this house – and it’s now one of the many things that I now thank him for. ;)

The Bub and I took a trip to Cincinnati for a fun day and my part of the fun was IKEA. I shared a few of my favorites from the trip (including some Christmas decor):

This is my favorite kitchen at that IKEA. I walk through it every single time. :)

I finished up the new trim and paint on four doors in and near the family room and I LOVE it, as always:

Many of you asked about the signs on our bathroom door (I love them!!) and I link to where I got those in the comments of that post:

Black and white will always be a classic!

It has been an absolutely glorious fall this year – I shared our day trip to beautiful Brown County Indiana:

There’s still a few leaves hanging on – but the potential snow predicted this evening (!!) make take most of them.

One of my dream projects for our house has always been a window seat – and I’m finally going to get one. :) :) So excited. I shared my inspiration for what I’d like to do in this post:

(source)

If you follow along on Instagram or FB I’ve shared/will be sharing some more pics along the way. I’m really tired of painting but I may tackle the new window trim in that spot this weekend.

We only put Halloween decor out for a week or so inside the house and I shared how we do it quick and cheap here:

You’ll have to go to that post to see the surprise under the crows. ;)

One of the last projects I finished up in the family room was an old Craigslist dresser I painted:

I absolutely LOVE it in this deep gray color. By the way, I’ve been saying that paint color (Graphite) is Sherwin Williams and it’s not – duh! It’s Benjamin Moore but I had it mixed at SW. Sorry about that. :)

And of course, the full family room reveal happened earlier this week – finally. Goodness, we are SO happy with it!:

I’ll be sharing more details about the space next week!

Have a safe Halloween and a lovely weekend!! See you Monday!

OK. I’m done. I can’t even believe it!! The family room expansion/renovation is DONE. GoodNESS, I worked my butt off on this room! I will go into a bigger background recap later, but long story short is that we wanted to add on to the back of our house, decided against it when we got the quotes (choke) and then decided to knock down a wall instead.

That wall was the one between the family room and my office, the one with the corner fireplace and the wall to the left:

Our original expansion plans were just to move out from that window wall and make the back part of the house more of a sunroom to extend the family room. We were never going to touch that office wall because I really wanted to keep my office. Turns out I don’t even miss, not at all. Isn’t that funny? It was a BEAUTIFUL room but no one ever saw it anyway! Except you guys, ha!

When my mind started working and the thought that taking down this wall might work, I sent this “real life” shot from my phone to two realtor friends to see what they thought. This really shows you a better angle:

The area to the left is our walk way from the mud room and garage and is where we had the TV. We reconfigured the space like this years back and it did help – but I didn’t like the corner fireplace and didn’t like that the room had different focal points.

It’s funny because I look at that photo and we had a much wider space when it was like that. But now, it’s SO MUCH BETTER because the family room is bigger and the kitchen doubled in size as well.

The space is long and skinny – we didn’t get any additional width to the room at all. In fact it’s skinnier now because everything is situated towards the back of the house. But we absolutely positively love it:

From the day we took down the wall we both said – it was supposed to be like this from the start. Actually every single change we’ve made in this whole great room (moving the kitchen table, switching out the doors, all of it) we’ve said the same every time. It should have been like this all along.

Taking down that wall brought in an insane amount of natural light – we gained two windows from the office. We also added six new overhead lights to the space:

The focal point of the room is now the grand fireplace and built ins:

We had to built it into the room to accommodate the size of the gas insert – we dealt with that by building out the entire thing and adding storage for electronics and all kinds of other stuff.

I went dramatic and gray with the whole thing and I adore it:

I am debating moving the rug down so it’s centered on the fireplace. I like how the sectional sits on it now though – if I move it the sectional will sit half on and half off.

To get an idea of how this renovation opened up the space – the old wall went right down the middle of the new fireplace. Because of the angle of the old fireplace we had about two feet, then windows. There was nowhere else to put furniture but right in front of that double window.

I can’t believe that our family room used to go that far into the kitchen! It actually went almost to the right side of that étagère:

Crazy! The final frontier in this renovation is the double doors that will take the place of that window – it was supposed to happen last week but we had a hiccup. :) More on that soon! (And those drapes will be replaced with some that match the other side of the room soon. These are up for privacy now.)

There are little things we noticed right away when we started this process. First, the animals LOVE IT. They are in this space way more than before. It’s weird. Secondly, we love that there’s one focal point in the space. I used to hate TVs over fireplaces but I’m actually falling in love with the look (and I really disliked it!). There’s no competition for your attention, it’s clean and makes the space feel even bigger. Finally, our view in here is SO much better.

I love love LOVE to sit down on this sofa during the day:

Everything is oriented to the outside. Before our view from the sofa was the front door and the TV. Now’s all the light and the trees and our pretty deck and patio. I absolutely LOVE that. It’s completely changed how this room feels.

We have more seating in the room now too – the chair to the right is my new “office.” It’s a super cozy spot! The newly painted dresser and the built in to the left of the TV hold my office supplies:

We get so much light in here now it’s hard to get good shots! I’ll take that problem any day. The natural light is why I knew the space could take the darker pieces. I love how they add some drama.

I have a lot of favorite spots in this space and this is one of them. That spool chair was the only furniture purchase for this room and I ADORE it:

I looked for months for the perfect chair and found it a few weeks ago at HomeGoods. It is spectacular. :)

See? Spectacular. And incredibly comfy too!

I moved what used to be used as a sofa table to the wall where the TV was before:

Since the sectional is floating in the middle of the room the dresser I had on this wall felt too deep. This table is perfect since it’s nice and skinny.

The big mirror was a happy accident – I leaned it up there to see how it felt and it makes the room feel even brighter – when I’ve taken it down to paint behind it there’s a noticeable difference in the room:

I thought this walkway would feel tight but it’s actually perfect:

Before the walkway was right in front of the TV and again – this just feels “right.” I told you we keep saying that! It’s how it always should have been. :)

And finally, this is my view as I sit and write:

That view will look even better when the kitchen renovation starts…next year…a long time from now…cause Mama needs a break. :)

I still want to share more details and photos of the space, some before and afters and all of the sources as well – I will share those very, very soon!

For now I think I’ll join him:

If you have any questions about anything let me know and I’ll be sure to address it!

THANK YOU for coming along for the ride! I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder on a space but not sure I’ve ever been prouder of a space either. :)