Family Room Plan

If you've been to my house, or you remember from my floor plan post, we've got a good-sized family room just a half flight of stairs down from the main floor of our home. I don't think I've ever shared a decent photo of the room itself, although it has been the location of a few different photos and videos that have been posted. It's a hard room to get a good photo of it, what with the yellow lighting, cream paneling and sea foam green carpet. Basically it's the ugliest room in the house. But the piles of toys, mismatched (and not in a good way) furniture and lack of personality has finally motivated me to make some changes. Here's what I'm thinking:


A colorful sofa. A while back we picked up an inexpensive IKEA sofa with a (now discontinued) white slipcover. While I still love the idea of a white slipcover for a room meant for kids - white can be bleached - it's not the best idea right now, since Charlotte is messy with her snacks and sippy cups and it'd have to be washed every week or so. So on our last IKEA run we picked up a new slipcover, in a cheery green color.


New carpet. I don't know about you, but I don't think a bright green sofa will pair very well with sea foam green carpet. So even though it's not in particularly bad shape, it's got to go. We'll be devoting some of the money we got from our insurance claim for our flooded basement to new carpet for the space and we'll hopefully get a new stair banister too - it's a little rickety. I'm thinking something from the Martha Stewart line would work well.


Paint and art. The panelled walls are currently a creamy color and look really dingy. They'll get a fresh coat of a brighter white color. And they'll finally get some art. I think different types of frames filled with a mixture of photographs, prints and Charlotte's artwork will be perfect. I plan to fill the entire tv wall with them and position the tv in such a way that it looks liked one of the frames on the wall.


Toy organization. Lately I feel like my family room looks like it's used by about 20 kids rather than 2 (Charlotte and Oliver). There are so many toys! We've currently got one IKEA Expedit piece and plan to get two or three more to fill up the entire tv wall. Between this new storage and the major purge that I have planned, we should have no reason to have a room overtaken by toys anymore.

Those four big changes, plus some new light fixtures, blinds and fireplace decor should transform the space from its current state of eye pollution to awesome. I'm super excited!

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4