Saturday, February 13, 2010

Family Room Project

We moved into our house in September and have been slowly trying to make this our home. We have more space than we have ever had but at times it can be overwhelming! Take our family room, it is off the kitchen and when we moved in we didn't have furniture to put in there so we have not used it. Not to mention it was built in the 70's and not much has changed in that room. (can we say fake wood paneling) So after the holidays we decided to tackle this room but before we went out and purchased furniture we thought it needed a little updating.


To begin our mini-reno project we first had to tear down the paneling on either side of the fireplace as well as removed the 1x3 that were used as a decorative chair rail. Let me say this was easier said than done. Not only were they nailed up but glued as well. This meant that the drywall underneath was torn and full of hole.


So that requires mudding. Let me say that if you can frost a cake, you can mud a wall. I enjoyed slathering those problem areas with mud and smoothing it out. The part that was less enjoyable was the sanding because no matter how well you put the mud on you need to sand. Luckily I got Rich a set of tools for Christmas that had an electric sander with it. If it was not for that one tool I am pretty sure I would still be in there sanding. Also know that the dust will get EVERYWHERE! I mean this, our house had a fine layer of white dust on everything. So do yourself a favor and don't stress until after this part of the project is done because if you try to keep your house dusted while doing this you will go insane...trust me!

Once we did the mudding/sanding then it was time to call in the troops (a.k.a. our children). We put them to work wiping all the dust off the walls so that we could prime. This started out being a great idea until we realized they were trying to wash the mudd off the walls! I am sure that where Bri was working she actually managed to remove a good portion before we realized what they were doing.


Priming was our next step, let me say this is an important one because if you do not prime then the paint will have an uneven sheen to it because the mud will soak in the paint differently than the walls. By priming the entire room you avoid this situation. But primer stinks! I mean STINKS! We chose to prime on the coldest day of the year, why do I mention this because we had to open the windows (remember it stinks). At one point it was snowing into our family room (because the windows were open).


Now the fun part, chosing and painting the colors. The fireplace is beautiful and we wanted that to be the focal point of the room, especially where it is the first thing you see when you walk into the room. So we decided to do an accent color on either side of the fireplace. We pulled out the orange color that is prominent in the bricks. For the three remaining walls we wanted something neutral that would go with the orange as well as everything else that goes into the room. We decided on a cream that has a very, very, very faint orange undertone to it. The results are wonderful. I am really wishing I had taken a comeplete before shot so that you can see the difference.


We have now moved onto the furniture aspect of this room project. We found a wonderful chair that is a dark brown for an amazing price. So now we are on the hunt for a couch and another chair with ottoman. We are headed out today to brave the sales in hopes of finding the "perfect" couch and chair. More updates to come as we work on this room.

 
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