Family room

We just recently moved across country from Alabama to Las Vegas and decided that since we did not know where we wanted to live exactly or how long we would be here, that we would rent a house. 

I am not in love with the house, but I love the area and the school that we are zoned for is a 9 out of 10, which as a friend of mine says, "Is like finding a unicorn in Vegas." So we went ahead and rented this house. It works for us and is a great space for Braddoc and his sensory troubles. 

I hate renting. I want to redo paint colors, tear down walls, put up new blinds, do bead boarding and chair rails and all the stuff that makes my heart happy... but for now I will have to be happy with just decorating our builder basic rental and dream of the day we own again.

Downstairs we have a giant open space. Its about 20x18 and because its such a beast of a room I decided that I wanted to split it in half and do a family room area and a kids play area. 

I broke one of my cardinal rules of decorating when we moved in and did not wait patiently for the right decor. I just wanted to have it done because the Holidays were coming up (we moved in the middle of October) and so I put whatever we had left over from upstairs, up on the walls in this space. 

I HATED it. 

I never went to down there.

 I ignored how messy it got and took no pride in the space at all.

 It did not make me happy, or make my heart pitter patter when I went down there. 

I actually got to the point where I avoided the space as much as I possibly could. All of the furniture was just haphazardly spaced down there and there really was no "zones" or organization at all. 

The decor that I did put down there had no consistency and it was just plain old BLAH!!

And of course the space is my kids, upstairs is mine (decorated wonderfully) and downstairs is theirs (not decorated wonderfully). I don't like it down there and neither do they, so of course they come hang out upstairs and bring all their toys and messes into the living space.

I realized pretty quickly that something needed to change down there.

 So right after Christmas (the first time we had time) hubby and I moved the furniture around so that we could create two spaces.

A TV/Family room space and a play area.

Once that was done I had to sit down and decide on what I wanted to do to decorate the space. This is of course the funnest part, but it can also be super stressful. I love seeing so many ideas and gathering up different pictures of things I love, in an effort to decide on what I'm really looking for in a space.

It can be hard to make the final decision on what you want in your space.

I wanted to make the space cozy and homey and I NEEDED it to be a place where the kids would want to be. But I also need it to be a space that functions well as a play area.

I started looking through pictures of curtains and color palettes trying to get an idea of what kind of color scheme I wanted in this space. I knew that I wanted some soft white colors as well as natural wood colors because our piano is a medium natural wood stain. Our couch is a light green and so I wanted something that would work with the couch color as well.

I didn't find any curtains that jumped out at me and even though I found color palettes that I liked nothing was really falling into place, so I decided to take a break and clear my head and come back later with a fresh start.

I had to make something for my daughters room so I went and dug through my fabric bucket and gasped when I ran across several yards of duck cloth in Waverly Folk damasks print.

I knew right away that this was the print I wanted to go with and so I sat down and started a board on Pinterest. 

I quickly found so many pictures that pulled my visions of the space together.

(all pictures have the links to the original source)

I fell in love with this picture and most definitely want to use that lamp (thankfully I just got one at Target).

I love the combo of the green and dark blue as well as the white and the dark and light wood tones.

Everything about this picture screams cozy and comfortable to me.

 here

There is a little skinny wall when you hit the bottom of the stairs, right before the room opens up and I have been racking my brain ever seen we moved in, trying to figure out what to do with this space. It is too awkward right there for any furniture so I really have to get creative.

I love this concept to do on the wall. Its not an area where the kids can destroy the pictures that are low down and it perfectly fills the space.

I have several dark blue, white, light blue and wooden frames to put in this area. Yeah for FREE!!!

here

Above our piano is just a big open space and I want to fill it with multiple things and of course Antique anything speaks to my soul so I am going to use as many wood, black, gold and white antique things as I can find to go up in that empty area. 

Here is where the patience is going to have to come into play because I have no idea where I am going to find all the "chippy charm" goodness in Vegas. When we were in Alabama I had my pick on just about every street corner, its definitely going to be more difficult here.

here

Our TV is sitting on an old dresser that I am going to paint white and chip up/distress and then I am going to stain the drawers a dark walnut color. But on either side of the TV is big blank space that needs to be filled so I am going to scour EBay to find some grain sacks like in this picture to put into frames and hang up in those empty spaces. I think I will need two deep on each side and then I'm going to make a big reclaimed wood sign to go above the TV.

here

I am so excited to get to work on this space and show the progress as it happens.

I made the curtains and did them double layered with another navy and white damasks print today and hung them up already. I stole the blue and green pillows and blankets I had stashed around the house and added them down there as well. The space is far from being done but its already so much cozier. I'm ready to go curl up with a good book and hang out down there.

Stay tuned for the progress updates.

Go here to see the rest of my Pinterest board ideas for this room.