Creating our living space

After becoming empty nested, my living room and formal dining room no longer served their purpose in the home. This is the story of a 6-month endeavor. Here’s what happened:

At some point the formal dining room table had become a quasi-desk area, and the living room had morphed into a music room complete with piano, numerous guitars, and congas; and all the amps, cords, cables, stands, etc. that come with all those items. Both rooms were being utilized, but not as intended. Finally, when my son (a music teacher) moved out and took all his instruments, we officially became empty nested. Yay! I got my living/dining room back only to realize no one used either one. Now the decision: Should I continue to clean/maintain both rooms and admire my beautiful dining room set? Or re-vamp the entire room to make it more user friendly for a couple of empty nesters? Eh, what-the-hell… let’s remodel!

After watching lots of episodes of Fixer Upper and looking through magazines, websites, and Pottery barn catalogs, I knew what I wanted… a casual dining area and a comfy TV room; both functional. My plan and subsequent solutions are highlighted below:

1.)  Repurpose or get rid of the old furniture. I listed my sofa & love seat, and formal dining set on CraigsList. The couches sold right away and I ended up putting the dining table & chairs on consignment (they sold 4 months later). I decided to keep my dining hutch because it is a perfect size for the room and it has tons of storage. Since I had nothing to lose, I decided what-the-hell, I’ll do something funky with it (see my hutch re-do post).

2.)  Replace the ill-fitting french doors with a sliding glass door. This gave us more room to function. Little did I know that a custom sized slider from Renewal-by-Anderson would chew up half my budget…WTH!! Oh well… good-bye wood floor.

3.)  Figure out something to do with the floor. Stained concrete? My husband’s idea = Brilliant! I ripped out the 21-year-old carpet— gross! and then had the floors stained at a fraction of the cost of wood flooring. It looks fabulous and we love it!

4.)  Paint. I chose my new color palette and began the process of painting over the existing painted walls and baseboards. This part of the project was completed over a few weekends. Whew!

4.)  Create a media wall for a 75″ TV. The 14 foot wide and 14 foot vaulted wall could easily house a large TV. What-the-hell… let’s go for the 75″ T.V! Now what do we do for a media console and the empty wall space surrounding the behemoth TV? I had a collection of mirrors on the wall previously, so I decided to repurpose them and create a gallery  around the wall-mounted TV (see my gallery wall post). Instead of a media console, I did this “Hyllis” hack to create a custom wall-to-wall low shelving unit (see my Hyllis hack post). It turned out great!!

5.)  Make window treatments. I knew I would want something to block out light and glare since the room is now a TV room. The problem is that I have 32 feet of window/wall to deal with on a tight budget. Solution: drop cloth curtains! Getting inspiration from Pottery Barn and purchasing their blackout curtain rods & rings, I created a lovely set of curtains that are fully functional for the room! (see my drop cloth curtain post)

6.)  Buy new stuff… not as easy as you think. Limited to space and configuration, I finally found a sectional at Macy’s that was the perfect color, shape and size. I’m still working on getting my dining room table set up. I got a new chandelier from homedepot.com, and new buffet lamps from Pier 1. I repurposed an old floor lamp base and tried to embellish its plain lampshade, and it was a fail; so I ended up getting a new lamp shade from Target. I got a new area rug and some pillows, and a few new accessories for my shelving unit.

Finally we have a room that is used everyday, and we love it!!