family room and a house tour

round two of my house tour is the family room - or what is currently the only clean room in the house!

i should probably have saved this room for the middle of the pack because it is my problem room. i have just never gotten that "i'm finished" feeling in here. not that you should ever have an "i'm finished" feeling in any room, because then you look around 20 years later and it's all pleather couches and gaudy wallpaper, but hopefully you know what i mean. the mantle is ever changing and really not anything spectacular at the moment, but i do like that my recent luggage painting has found a home there along with a strand of bunting i just made.

when we moved in, the judges paneling in this room was all dark brown and i knew it needed to be painted because the room does not have much natural light. before you get all hot and bothered about painting the wood - the paneling is really crappy 1/8" thick pieces "wood". not beautiful thick cherry which i would never have painted.

a few things about this shot:

• all the tables are second hand
• the child's rocking chair has been passed down many generations in my family
• the orange lamp is a yard sale find that i LOVE - the base has a nightlight in it and glows orange. perfect lighting for movie nights. haha!
• i am a sucker for large floor throw pillows which you see stacked up on an antique chest in the far corner. my trick is to buy the cheapest, ugliest large pillow you can find and then recover them. i think these pillows were $5 each and then i put upholstery fabric on the top and a generic brown on the bottom which is tip #2 - always use a cheap solid fabric on the back of your pillows, it's silly to waste $$$ on the backside of something.  

the best thing we ever did in this room is put in a set of hinge pin doors. previously, we have a tiny single door leading out to the deck which let hardly any light in at all. when we built our new deck, we doubled the door width and it has made all the difference. i knew i didn't want french doors because the couldn't really swing any where. i had settled on sliders, but the contractor talked me out of those because they let a lot of air out. the hinge pin turned out perfect. the left side does not move and is essentially a large window, then the right side is the door part that opens.

a few more things about this shot:

• the mirror is a recent $10 purchase - it's chippy and worn and i LOVE it!
• the tv stand dresser is a $100 purchase. i took out the top dresser, added a mdf plank in it's place, drilled a 2" hole in the back of the dresser for cables and now i have a place for the satellite box, dvd player, etc.

that's it for the tour today - see you next week!