Tackling Pain Points for my Family Room Makeover

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This family room makeover is 2 long years in the making! The Fall 2022 One Room Challenge is upon us and I’m so excited to take on my family room!

I plan to solve several pain points for our living room and make impactful changes on a smaller budget. The pain points include lack of shelving and storage, late afternoon sun shining in our faces, refinishing and freshening up some dinged up furniture with bent knobs, and updating our fireplace and hopefully hiding an awful stain in the slate! Since we are heading into the holidays, I’ll be finishing up this challenge with some of my favorite holiday decorating tips and tricks!

The Plan: Family Room Makeover

I have been excited about this project since I finished my home office renovation in May! Check that out Here! The ORC community is amazing and I loved participating so much. I met some incredible DIYers and the continued camaraderie is fantastic. This summer I took a quick break from all of my DIY projects to travel and enjoy home, but I’m ready to get back to my list.

It’s been a busy and exciting few weeks in our household, which is why I’m behind on sharing that I am participating in the Fall 2022 One Room Challenge! The most exciting news is, I’m ENGAGED! Steven proposed while we were in Las Vegas with his dad and his girlfriend in mid September! I’ve been soaking up the happiness and excitement for our future and have mixed that with a little wedding planning, which has taken some of my thought away from talking about this renovation. While I’m behind on the sharing, the project is well underway!

Here are what I feel are the pain points for our family room and some of the plans so far!

1. Lack of Shelving and Storage

The primary change in this family room makeover is the ikea hack built-ins! This space lacks shelving to display photos and decor. Read: seasonal decor! My skeleton and pumpkin collection as well as my Christmas gnomes and decor need a place to live! HA!

It also needs quick storage and room to grow for the future, once we have kids! Ikea cabinets were the perfect budget friendly solution to get these built-ins started. It will be a great place to quickly store toys and games. The below design plan gives you the overall concept of my plan, but misses some of the finishing details. Our baseboards are tall, so I will be placing the cabinets onto a 2 x 4 platform. I will be changing out the handles from the ones included with the cabinets. Lastly, I will be adding crown at the top, like I did in my office to connect the top of the shelves to the ceiling!

2. Late Afternoon Sunlight

Firstly, we need to raise the curtain rods that were installed by the previous owners! They are hung far too low and by raising them a couple feet, there will be more light blocked and it will add to the design and feeling of the space!

Second, we need there to be some degree of black out with the new curtains. There is a time in late afternoon where if you are sitting in the corner of our sectional in our family room, you will be blinded by the light! I'm still deciding on fabric and color, but I'm leaning towards dark gray or navy curtains.

3. Dated and Plain Fireplace with a stain

Our fireplace is just... blah! On the slate that is on the floor, there is this weird stain that just won't go away. You can see it faintly in the photo below. It's against the fireplace just a few inches to the left of the inner edge of the slate surround. It truly bothers me and I am so ready to cover it up in some way. Currently I have multiple fairly inexpensive changes to update our fireplace.

The first thing I that I want to create a faux beam wood mantle. I plan to create a box to fit over the current mantle and to cover those little "teeth." Next I want to remove those circles and the trim that surrounds the fireplace. And finally I plan to get tile to cover up the slate, both on the floor as well as surrounding the actual fireplace. I'm debating if the wall will differ from the floor, but when all is said and done, I will not see that stain any longer! Plus the fireplace will pop!

Can I also add just how cute Bella is in this photo? I'm still oh so obsessed with her!

4. Refinish Furniture

There are a couple of pieces of furniture that are in desperate need of a makeover with this family room makeover! The first piece is our coffee table!

I purchased this coffee table for my very first apartment that I lived alone in! I snagged it for $12 from the habitat restore in Charleston in 2008! It didn't have any glass, so I found a local place that would cut a piece of glass for me. I have loved this coffee table, but it needs a makeover pronto! It is dinged and one of the handles was bent mysteriously by my ex and it is time to give it new life! I'll be stripping it from it's current stain and trying to give it a lighter wood tone and replacing the handles!

I also want to refinish our kitchen table and chairs. This is one that I am still pondering as far as staining it or painting it. My current plan is to strip it and stain it a lighter wood color. I also plan on recovering the seats to match our personalities more. I just worry about colors clashing between the kitchen table and the coffee table.

This is a throw back photo to one of my very first skeleton scenes for the skeleton tour I participate in each September/October! Make sure to check out my page on IG to see all of my fun skeleton scenes!

Well that sums up my current plans for my family room makeover. There are a few other things that I may or may not end up doing, so I'll keep those as a surprise for later!

Don't forget to continue to check out all of the One Room Challenge rooms! There are so many creative DIY projects in the making!

Tackling Pain Points for my Family Room Makeover