Family Room

Sometimes designing on a budget is not only tricky, but lengthy. It can take a long time to save up for the little things you feel like your room needs. We've lived in our home for a year now and I think I can now say that I have 1 room that I'm satisfied with. I THINK. I could still adjust the accessories in my shelfs and maybe add some pictures on the naked wall to the right of the curtains... oh and dust more.. lol but I have 1 room that I would say is done.

Here it is Before:

       

The seller painted all of the walls this very pale tan color that is just fine, but a little boring for me. Notice the wood baseboards. I'm sure they were the epitome of class in '79 when they went in, but they're a little worn and tired now, so it was time for an upgrade

This is what the room looks like now:

Hard to tell in this picture, but the walls have been updated to a grayish blue. I hung some fun curtains from my old house to frame the window. (They don't look that fun on here, but they have fun retro gold circles on them)

As I mentioned, one of my main decorating struggles is budget. Isn't it everyones? I LOVE this photo wall and I think one of the main reasons is because everything on this wall was given to me by someone I love. My brother is the artist of three of the pictures, and 5 pieces were given to me by my sister in law, and the little picture in the blue frame is a picture of Chewbaca which was a house warming gift from our friends Katie and Trevor.

I had these bookshelves in our old house, but our new house has a billion bookshelves built in. The shelf on the left was a light oak color and the shelf on the right was white. I took one of the doors of my entertainment center to home depot and they helped me pick a paint that would look nice with the wood. The shelves are not level, but eventually I will raise the shorter one a few inches and run a shelf across the top of the TV to hide those wires that aren't actually going to anything since we don't have a baller... um.... tv watching thing that makes the surround sound work... (?)

Storage boxes from when I was single and basically running a design office out of my bedroom closet (design school) make it easier to find video games and/or movies that we're looking for.

Yes, all of those books were gifts. I painted that vase a while ago with stained glass paint. I found the bark covered candle at the Goodwill for $1.20. And the candle sticks were a gift from my friend Jake's family.

I also painted these vases. These darling owls were also given to me by my sister-in-law. She's contributed several of the decorations around my house actually.

My peacock bookends are perhaps some of my most favorite things in my house, and one of the things that I spent the most money on in this room. I got them at Steinmart for $15. Please ignore that there are 2 copies of Treasure Island in this 1 picture... these are our most colorful/classy looking books.

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed your tour of the family room! My friend Shanda requested pictures of my house. So even though most of my house is not this complete, there will be more home tour pictures to come complete with the dreams I have for them.