Lame, I know.
Before I show more after pictures, let's revisit the before pictures. These were taken right after we got the keys to our house, and this particular picture was taken from the dining room.
This is just a straight on view. My biggest complaint about this room is that it is too narrow, and there are too many doors so it's basically a high traffic area without adequate room to travel and have furniture at the same time.
Yes. It's basically a very wide hallway.
We need a family room though, and nothing can be done about it, so we just plunked our furniture down and we're living with it.
I didn't hate the fireplace brick, but it didn't really go with my vision for the room. I spent a lot of hours staring at this brick and trying to decide what I wanted to do with it.
The wood stove gets a lot of use in the winter, and we have really enjoyed having it.
This area is outdated, but there's not a lot that can be done about it right now. Eventually we'd like to move the door directly to the left over and put a sliding barn door here. That's down the road though, in a major reno project which we do not yet have the funds for.
Story of our lives. It's called reality.
In the meantime, we'll make use of this space as best we can. The first thing we did is to recycle the television which the former owners so kindly left for us. It cost us $25 to unload it at Best Buy, and it was worth every penny just to see it go. And that only took us two years to do.
Now we can start with the after pictures. As I mentioned before, paint goes a long way.
I painted all the interior doors in the house pretty early on. I was craving something besides off white, and painting the doors helped me live with the rest of the house when I didn't have time to paint.
This is a picture of Rey, the Mustang we've been lucky enough to board for the past eighteen months. Zoë took some amazing pictures of her last winter, and I've been wanting to get a print made with this picture as soon as I saw it. I made this canvas at Canvas on the Cheap. It was easy to make and it was delivered to me quickly. The quality is good, and I would definitely do it again.
Sadly, Rey's owners moved to Boise and she is going to be leaving us very soon. We are going to miss her so much. She brings so much sass to our little herd. One day she even chased a coyote off our property! I love her sweet little heart.
The only reason this family room got painted this summer is because we bought a new wood stove. It's kind of different, isn't it? I like it because I don't have to get down on the ground to load it up. Getting down on the ground isn't so much the problem, it's the getting up off the ground that I don't like.
Anyway, since we were going to have a new stove delivered, I had to paint the ceiling and walls around it, and since I was doing that, I'd better figure out what I was going to do about the multi-colored brick. I had been pinning white washed fireplaces for over a year, so I just went for it.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
And once I painted that little corner, it was like my green light to paint the rest of the family room and it was on.
That spot where the television used to sit is what I am now calling my wood hole. I think it's going to be the next sought after feature for homeowners. I'm going to stuff it full of firewood, and then Peanut Head won't have to traipse back and forth to the garage for firewood all winter long.
Won't that be nice for him?
I really had no business doing any work inside the house over the summer since we have so much work outside that needs to be done. As you can see, that didn't stop me.
I carried my blue from the dining room onto the opposite wall in the family room. It makes me happy.
More doors! Can you even believe that? There is basically only one way to arrange the furniture in this room, and you're lookin' at it. If you see another one, please tell me, because I could use some help.
We probably shouldn't even have an ottoman in here on account of the fact that there's no room to walk, but we like to put our feet up.
I must tell you about these shelves.
We desperately needed an up high place to put two of our surround sound speakers, so originally I bought two cute little farmhouse picture ledges at Fred Meyer's. That was an extreme fail though, because they were very cheaply made, and I ended up having to return them.
So after we put the holes in the walls and I had to fill them, Peanut Head started grilling me about what it was exactly that I wanted, and then he showed me this piece of wood he drug in from the field.
Isn't it beautiful? Okay, maybe not yet, but can you see its potential?
I hosed it off, lightly sanded it, and then stained it. I didn't want to go too crazy with the sanding because I wanted it to retain it's original character, but minus the dirt and bugs. I'm all over farmhouse decor, but not the dirty kind. 😷
Originally I envisioned more of a barn wood grey, but there was something about the wood that compelled me to stain it. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.
And that completes our family room. Next up is my sewing and craft room. It's 95% finished. I just need to make some curtains, clean the cat vomit stain off the carpet, and then finally take some pictures. With any luck I'll have three posts in three weeks. Look at me go!
