Rearranging some Rooms – Cuz We’re Random Like That

About once every 6 months or so I get the itch to rearrange furniture. Sometimes it’s just a little tweak, like moving our bed from one side of the room to the other. And other times, it’s a massive overhaul of multiple rooms, or all rooms…?, throughout our home. I have always been this way. I remember as a 10 year old BEGGING my parents to switch their dining room and living room. They never gave in. I just thought it would be fun to dine in the living room, people! Ah!

So now that I’m a big girl, living in a space of my own, I guess there’s nothing keeping me from doing something wild and crazy like that. And thankfully, my husband doesn’t mind helping me drag our furniture all around every couple months.

Right now we have a large family room (that we’re currently using as an office/family room/playroom) that has a pass-through to the kitchen as well as a large dining room and a large living room on the other side of the house. Since the day we moved in, it has not sat well with us to have two living areas. We just don’t like the redundancy, nor do we have enough furniture to fill two living areas.

We love the living room so much more for relaxing but whenever we entertain (with Dave’s family), everyone typically congregates in the family room because that’s what Dave’s family used to do (when his parents lived here) and since we’ve got a couch and chairs in there, that’s what naturally happens. My theory is that if the comfy furniture was all moved out of the family room and into the living room, guests would be “forced” into the living room.

And my Aunt Connie recently gave us a baby grand piano and I recently scored a large area rug on Rugsusa.com. So all these things factored together, and the other day I was shifting some furniture around and I thought…”Hey, what if I moved the large dining room table into the family room? and then used the formal living / dining rooms as a living / music room?” That would allow us to use the living room for lounging, the current dining room for the new larger piano and some seating (a.k.a. a music room) and the family room as the office/ informal dining room (because quite honestly, we don’t get too formal around here…).

And then I thought about it for a while longer and while sitting here at the computer in our office area inside the family room, I looked over at the built in bookshelves and thought “Man, they would be great as a built-in china cabinet” and considering we don’t have a china cabinet and that’s basically what has held me up from even using our china for the past 5+ years, I think this would be a fabulous idea to move our dining table over here.


Here are a couple inspirational images I’m going with for now:

We have a large window on the west wall of the now family room similar to this. We’d have a great view while dining in front of the window. It would definitely be a sunny cheerful dining area and it’s by far the largest room in the house so it would be terrific for holding large family gatherings like we often do.


I’d love to create an informal vintage industrial feel kind of like these next few photos:

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I could even pull our wicker chairs back in from the mudroom and pair them with our dining table and possibly some new industrial chairs (?).

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I’m not EXACTLY sure how all this is going to shake down. I admit this idea is half-baked. I love it and all, but I recently began doing a lot of in home daycare for family and friends so I feel the need more than ever for a family friendly living area for the kids to play. And someday I plan on homeschooling so I’m not 100% sold on this idea since I have been using the family room more casually and the living/dining rooms as more formal zones. I’m a bit on the fence. But what do you guys think?

Should I go for it? For now I think I should at least give it a try. We can always move the furniture back around again later if we don’t fall in love.

Master Bedroom Reveal and Roomspiration Link Up

I wanted to post this Master Bedroom Reveal for you earlier today but I had some technical difficulties and had to finish it tonight. I'm trying to cram it in before the "31 Days to a Clutter Free Home" series starts tomorrow. And I guess I'm sliding in right at the deadline with 56 minutes to spare....nothing like last minute!

Our Master Bedroom is always a work in progress. It has been collected over years and will most likely continue to evolve. Overall our goals are to create a neat and clean, peaceful sanctuary to rest in.

I purchased the oak headboard (frame and mattress) as well as two oak dressers when I was in the 8th grade. I am proud to say that as a 14 year old I had saved up enough cash on my own to buy these pieces. They are not really what I would choose today if I were to go buy bedroom furniture but I am thankful for them.

This is what our Master Bedroom used to look like. I chose this green color and painted it the year we moved in. I thought it would be a tranquil color but it was a lot darker than what I was going for and just was not the peaceful look I was going for. The curtains and hideous green carpet were inherited from the previous owners.

While repairing drywall and repainting our bedroom in 2010, we used our spare bedroom. I knew I wanted to go with a blue and brown color scheme so I went ahead and purchased the blue crinkle voile curtain panels from Lowe’s for $14.99 / each and hung them in that room. And the white sheer panel to go in between was also from Lowe’s for $9.99. I think the curtains are one of my favorite things about our bedroom now. Our old curtains were short and made the windows look so small. From reading other people's blogs I picked up on the idea of putting long panels on even short windows and I love it. It gives the room a much more luxurious feel.

We already owned the quilt shown below. I was determined not to spend money so I figured it would work well enough with my new color scheme. It was even reversible. In the end we realized it was not the look we were going for. Nor was the lack of bed skirt :)

So once we got settled back in our bedroom with our curtains put up in there, we decided to invest in some bedding. I found this blue and brown leafy comforter and matching shams and pillows for only $49.99 on clearance at Home Goods. It was meant to be!

The same day that I found the comforter set I also found the lamp on the nightstand. It was only $29 at Home Goods so of course I fell in love…and it fell into my cart…

I had already purchased the 2 blue silk pillows from Home Goods the year before for $25 and I had purchased the silky brown lumbar pillow from IKEA several years ago (no clue how much it was) and the brown one in the middle of the 3 from Garden Ridge for just $9.99.

We “shopped our house” and decided the bedroom would be a great place to display our Hayden Lambson print that we’d purchased years ago from…get this: a truck stop! Doesn’t everyone find their home decor near the ladies room while making a pit stop? It had an oak frame so it matched the furniture and the blue mat matched the bedding and didn’t really match any other rooms in our house anymore, so it was a fit!

I found this darling little green storage ottoman on clearance at Home Goods for just $35. I could hardly believe my eyes and the cashier was even surprised when she rang it up. To this day have found absolutely nothing wrong with it to indicate why it was on clearance. I wanted a chair in our bedroom but realized this ottoman is much better because I can throw random things in it that have no other home and no one’s the wiser.

At first when we moved back in the room, we had a little problem with furniture arrangement…and well, pillow arrangement, too…LOL. See the photo below.

We tried placing our dresser on the left side of the room when you walk in the door and having a somewhat large night stand on the right side. Something about the window placement on the right side of the room really made the space seem so off balance.

 

Also we don’t have a TON of space to work with since the room is only about 11’ x 11’ and the bathroom door and door out to the rest of the house are placed so that one entire wall can’t really be used for furnishings.

So one weekend I asked my mom and sister to help me with this furniture arranging nightmare and we moved things all around trying different scenarios. One of us came up with the idea of removing the mirror from the dresser so that it could be placed in front of the window and not look too odd.

Lo and behold, that made a huge difference!

 

Having the dresser on that side of the room makes it seem much more balanced when you look in. We also thought we should find a smaller night stand.

I shopped the house and found this antique end table from the living room. It is a smaller size and works better in the smaller bedroom. It belonged to my great grandmother and was always in my bedroom when I was a little girl.

 

After years of having a night stand with no storage, I am so glad to have these handy drawers to keep all my random junk handy….coaster, pens, hairbands, chapstick.  Sure, the drawer could use a little organizing in itself, but it works.

  

So what do you think of our Master Bedroom? There are times I look at it and wish it was a bit more flashy and colorful or that I had mixed in a few more fun patterns, but for now, with the small space we have I don’t want it to be too busy. I think that it works and keeps it feeling cozy and restful.

I’m linking this room up to the Roomspiration Blog Hop on Just a Touch of Gray. Have a great weekend!

Great Room - Before & After

We are blessed to have a large 18 ft x 20 ft Great Room that was built on to the back of our home {somewhere in the early 90s I'm guessing}. Check out the floor plan for more info:

It really is by far the most spacious room in our home with vaulted ceilings and 3 large windows and a large sliding glass door overlooking our wooded 1 acre lot. There's even a working wood-burning fireplace in one corner. This was always our favorite room in the house, so when doing our whole house makeover over the past few years, we were determined to accentuate the positives of this room.

Here are some icky, yucky before photos. At that point in time, we used our front room as a TV room and had a dining area, piano and sitting area set up in this room. There was a lot going on.

We had purchased the couch and overstuffed leather chair and ottoman when we got married but practically everything else in the room was free/gifted from friends/ family members. Looking back, I cringe because I do not like all the patterns we had going on along with the dark wood trim. And the clutter and trinkets. That's the part I really don't like.

We went on a Bungalow tour of homes in Broad Ripple (a part of Indy) once and that day forever changed my perspective in decorating. I remember going into the homes and being amazed at how there was nothing sitting out. Now, that could be because they had 100's of strangers wandering thru their homes those days and they took their personal effects out, but....Dave & I were both struck with how much we loved the simplicity and peaceful feeling that no visual clutter evoked. So we set out on a 5 year journey of purging and decluttering in an effort to achieve that sparce look.

Nowadays we have our home staged to try to sell it so that explains why we pretty much have NOTHING out, but honestly, I love it. There's so much less for our 1 year old to get into, there's less to dust around, etc. I have just found that I'm a lot more apt to dust the top of a piece of furniture if I don't have to first unload 15 things from it!

So, getting back to the Great Room.... The walls were painted off-white with a flat paint by previous owners so over the years with normal wear and tear, they were beginning to look rather dingy and there were some nails and seams popping out of the drywall that needed to be repaired. We knew we wanted to choose a warmer color for the walls that would make the room feel cozier. We chose Valspar "Arid Plains" for the walls, from Lowe's. We painted the ceiling white and the trim and mantle a high gloss white.

The old flooring was cherry laminate. It had several areas that had gotten wet and bubbled over the years so it needed to be replaced. We opted for a speckled frieze carpet. The speckles make dirt seem less obvious and the soft carpet and pad are great for our little boy to play. Not to mention it is very comfy underfoot.

After 3 years of this room looking like this (it acted as a storage space as we worked on all the other rooms), it is so nice to have this space back!

This room formerly had 1 ceiling fan in the middle of the room and it was always too dark and sometimes a little stuffy since it was added onto the house so we added in a second ceiling fan and now the room stays nice and cool on hot summer days and is very well lit. We also ended up replacing the 3 windows and the patio door for more energy efficient models. That also drastically improved the heating/cooling in this added on room.

We purchased brushed nickel curtain rods from Lowe's and white IKEA Ritva curtain panels for a nice floor-to-ceiling look.

David purchased the N.A. Noel painting, "December" over the fireplace off ebay from someone all the way in Canada and reframed it with ancient oak barn siding from his parent's corn crib in Ohio that was damaged in a wind storm. The irony of that is the artist's gallery is located just 10 miles from our home! I think the frame adds so much to the painting. I just love it! There's chipped white and red paint on the wood that brings out the colors in the painting.

I purchased the woven storage ottoman shown below from Garden Ridge for just $25. It is extremely nice to have for Levi's toys and it forces us to edit his "collection" so that we don't end up with way more toys than we need in our living area. And even though he's only 13 months old he already knows how to clean up and put his toys away. He did it this afternoon without me even asking him to!

We reused our plaid sofa although I'd replace it with an IKEA Ektorp slipcovered sofa in a heartbeat if money were not an issue. We also reused our leather chair and ottoman. And we scored the dark brown leather loveseat from my parents' garage. Mom purchased it a few years ago then decided she needed a wider sofa rather than a loveseat.

The armoire in the corner, shown below, houses our home office. More can be found on that here. The straight back chair next to it was inherited from David's Aunt who got it from David's Granny.

I also hope to someday refinish the coffee table and matching end tables (that are currently in our guest room). They have dark wood tops and hunter green legs. You know their type. You probably saw them in many a home back in the early 90s. But I will wait for now until I decide more what color I want to go with and if I have a new couch or something.

And here's my attempt at doing what "The Nester" recommended on InCourage one day. Her idea is GENIUS! I placed this drop leaf table in the room with basically nothing on it. And I love it. It is very handy if I need a place to sit down and write a note or do the bills, or even I would ever have a chance to scrapbook or work a puzzle (ha! with a 1 year old I don't see that happening...). Once again, like with dusting, if I have to take the time to clear off a space to use it to work/play, it just won't happen! I don't want knick-knacks to get in the way of living around here.

It is SO nice to have a table other than the one we eat our meals at so we don't have to pick up what we're working on just to eat dinner.

Here's a rough breakdown (estimated from memory) on what we spent on this room transformation:

Drywall repair - we hired a professional to speed up the process due to the large size of this room and the vaulted ceilings - $1,500

Paint (for walls, ceiling, trim, primer also) - $165

Carpet - $820 (I definitely recommend shopping around - this was my 3rd stop, a local store, after estimates of $1600 and $1200 - and they installed it 3 days later as opposed to Lowe's schedule of 3 weeks out!)

New windows and door - $700 materials + $320 labor = $1020

Storage ottoman - $25

Computer Armoire - $100

And that's pretty much it since the rest of our furniture we already owned!

TOTAL - $3,630

Holy cow. Once again I'm pretty amazed at how much that cost us! But I still feel we were being pretty frugal. I need to figure out how other people do things cheaper! Cuz I already have so many other things that I'd love to do such as get a new sofa, a storage ottoman as big as our coffee table, new arm chairs, a rug, etc, etc, etc. Hhhhhhh....patience....But for fun, I did create a mood board here that helps me keep up hope that someday I can do a bit of a makeover.

I'm linking this up to the Roomspiration blog hop and link party at View Along the Way. Check it out for lots more living room inspiration.

Front Room Challenges

Our Front Room challenges me. I have been working on a "Home Tour" to add to the blog and everytime I try to describe the front room, I find myself apologizing for it. And that's unfortunate considering it is the very first room our houseguests see.

I love the new wall paint color and the white painted trim and the new cherry flooring and window treatments. Don't get me wrong. But arranging furniture in this room is a challenge to me. It always has been.

It is 11 ft x 17 ft hallway, er, I mean, ROOM with 4 doorways, a bar counter and cold air return on one wall and a giant bay window on the opposite wall. Here is my attempt at drawing a quick little floorplan with "Paint". Enjoy...

The wall on the left (in the above floorplan) is the only wall that isn't all cut up with doors and windows, but it is so close to the front door and hallway door that you can't really put much on it. We managed to squeeze these two wicker chairs and a small table in between. But when you open the front door, it nearly bumps into the chair on the left. I also have a mirror I'm waiting for my hubby to hang here. (At one point we had an AMAZING gallery wall up there but took it down for trying to sell our house.)

After thinking on it a long time, I decided it would be a good idea to relocate the master bedroom doorway closer to the kitchen doorway. That would allow us to make an L shaped arrangment of living room type furniture by the bay window and master bedroom wall. But, alas, that would be a lot of work. But a lot of work that would be worth it if we were going to stay here a long time, in my opinion.

Alternatively, if we didn't relocate that door and continued to use this as a dining area, I'd love to swap out the rectangular dining table with a round table and upholstered comfy chairs. I think traffic would flow better around it and make it seem less like you're entering right into a dining area.

John & Sherry on Young House Love did this same kind of thing with their new dining area, which ironically is also in their front room, where there front door is located:

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When they first announced they were going to use their front room as a dining area, I commented on it and asked them if they felt it would be awkward for the front door to enter into the dining area since that's the same issue I was facing. They said their plan was to use a round table and upholstered chairs to make it feel more like a living area than strictly a dining area. I think what they've done so far looks great. But, I still have issues with this concept at times...

Anyways, if I had a round table, I might even use those wicker chairs I have on the far wall around the table and replace the small sitting area with a console table, a lamp and a mirror. And I'd love to get a new rug. But again, I have to stick to the budget.

So what do you all think? Any budget friendly ideas on how to rearrange this space to make it flow better?

Regardless of this challenge, our Front Room has come a long way from what it used to look like...don't you agree? Ugh. I cringe when I look back at this photo. There are so many yucky things I could point out, but I will refrain.

 Linking up to Remodelaholic today.