Our New Family Room

Finally, at long last, I am unveiling our family room that I've been working on for the last week. I just put the finishing touches on it this morning. Warning - tons of pictures :)

This is from the bottom of the stairs showing the length of the family room. Pardon the mess!

Here's after:

The open door in the center is where the bottom of the stairs is. The door on the right is the laundry/storage room. Before:
The stairs are to the right here. After:Laundry Room door after:
Air Hockey table wall before:
After:
Close-up of the shelf. I had the heart and star already and added raffia to them to make them cuter:
Bar before (some of these aren't good quality pics):
Bar after:
Wall next to the bar before. Notice the ugly thermostat and broken doorbell:
Wall next to bar after. We changed out the thermostat with the old white one from upstairs, took the doorbell down and hung the clock strategically over the gaping hole from the doorbell:
View of 2nd half of family room before:
View of 2nd half after:
Fireplace before:
Fireplace after:
Window and half of couch before:
Window and couch after:
I made this curtain! My friend Stephanie from digiscrapital taught me how to make it. It was so super easy, and it only cost me $3 to make! It's not as cute as hers, but I still love it!
2nd half of couch before:
Couch after:
This originally looked like this and I took the ribbon off and replaced it with raffia. Much cuter :)
Little hallway off left side of the room. (Bathroom straight ahead, Mark's video game room on the right, heater access on the left) Haddie was modeling the before:
Hallway after:
Ugly light in hallway before. It reminded me of a hotel hallway light:
New light fixture. Ya like Mark's Men's Room sign for his game room? He's so proud of that.
We also replaced all the electrical outlets and light switches with white ones.
This room was so much work but I love it now! Before I didn't like to spend a lot of time in it because it felt like a dungeon. But now it feels like a cozy family room that I want to hang out in. I love my decor, and am proud that I handmade some of it. It isn't anything fancy, and our couch isn't pretty but it's home to us. I am extremely proud of it, especially since I did more than half of it myself. Mark helped some, but with work he wasn't home enough to do more. Haddie was really cooperative and watched movies while I painted. She and I had fun hanging out together downstairs. Anyway, so here she is - all ready for us to enjoy as a family!

A Work In Progress

Here's my progress thus far with painting the paneling in the family room:

It is such a mess - I hardly have room to move around! But there's no way I'm moving all this furniture upstairs out of the way. This is a very long process. I'm still working on priming all the grooves in the paneling. By this evening I should be able to get the rollers out and prime over all of it. I don't think I'm doing too bad, considering this is a one-woman show and the room is huge.
Little one is down for a nap now, so it's time to hit the paintbrush again :)

Pillows

I have to pat myself on the back. I pulled out my sewing machine and sewed for the first time last night since middle school. Which means I was fairly clueless as to what I was doing :) But I figured it out, plus pillows really aren't that tough.

Here's one side of them:

And here's the other:

Freaking awesome, right? I seriously made them in like, 2 hours. Which I didn't think was bad, considering my expertise (or the lack thereof), I stuffed the crap out of them (I didn't want wussy pillows), and I had some sewing machine problems in the middle of it that took me awhile to figure out and then fix. They're bigger than the pictures make them look - they're just shy of being the same size as a standard pillow. I have 2 square pillows, one red and one dark blue, that these will go great with on my family room couch.

Here's a tile I made for the family room a month or so ago. I used my Cricut and Design Studio to cut the vinyl. Unless I decide differently later, it is going above my fireplace on the mantle. Yes, the 'F' is backwards, but I promise it's the font that did it, not me!

And just because I'm thrilled with all my new Americana decorations, you must endure a picture of it all together:

This is just the new stuff - I have lots of other stuff I've acquired over the last year or so, but it's already in place in the family room. For now - until I get my primer and paint and paint those ugly panel walls. Then I get to redecorate it all over again! Yay!

Barn Stars

Okay so you remember these? YAY! They're ready for show and tell!

Tada! I'm so excited for them. The yellow just wasn't doing it for me, not to mention the fact that I'm decorating in Red, White (cream actually) and BLUE.

I love them :) At first, when I was distressing this one:

...I was not pleased with how it was looking. My sandpaper was leaving scratch marks all over the place, and some of the old yellow ended up poking through. So I distressed all of it that I wanted done, then I sprayed another very light coat of blue paint over top. It fixed the scratch marks AND the yellow. Plus I just think it looks cool!

Yard Sale Finds

I'm quite proud of my yard sale finds today! I spent more ($13.25) than I usually do at yard sales, but I'm especially excited about these, so I won't complain :)

This hurricane jar was .25! I'm going to fill it with something fun and use it as my table centerpiece - if I can keep little one's hands off it. Otherwise it will reside in a higher location.

I am in L-O-V-E with these barn stars. $10 for these; there were twice as many as these shown, but Kellie and I split them. They were brand new with tags, with the cheapest being about $11. We spent $20 for all of them. I have the yellow one on the left hung outside my front door for now. But after some paint, they will eventually live in my family room, which is decorated in Americana.

I love the detail on these! How fun!
This wall hanging I paid $2 for - a little steep, but it goes incredibly well with my Americana decor. I'm going to change out the pink ribbon (huh?) on the top.
Apologies for the picture quality. This little throw pillow I couldn't pass up for $1.

Here's a side pic of the pillow, showing the material that's on the back. Those are little stars all over it, not dots.

I SO cannot wait to get my family room done. It's a huge project, as the room runs the entire length of the house - it makes up 1/4 of my home's square footage! That's a lot of paneling to prime/paint. But it will be gorgeous once it's done.