Thanks to everyone who left such wonderful feedback on Ryder’s Reno-cated room. I feel a surge of happiness every time I hear him say, “I like my new room! It’s blue!”
Now the logical thing would be to show off the next bedroom in sequence, BUT, because I have two little boys, and because taking pictures is dependent on which area of the home is tidy at the moment, let’s skip to my main floor – where I’d like to introduce you to my new “Great Room”.Here’s the scoop: when we first purchased our home, we spent hours going over the floor plan, considering how to set up our domain. The builder had laid out the main floor as depicted on the right (note: foyer, powder room and garage not pictured). So without going against the proposed plan, we proceeded to set up four (4) distinct areas: a family room at the back of the house and a combined living/ dining/ entertainment area in the front of the house.Just in case you’re wondering… all the furniture was purchased literally weeks before I found out I was pregnant with Ryder (who was a most welcome surprise)… so brace yourself – you’ll see a lot of light-coloured furniture that is so telling of a couple who hasn’t considered the joys of sticky fingers and grape juice.
Now having a home that is almost completely an open concept is both awesome and frustrating; awesome because the house looks large and modern – frustrating because all the furniture and décor has to complement each other and lend to a continuous “look”.
Well, this July it will be four years in our home, and we finally came to realize that we spend exactly 99.9% of our time holed up at the back of the house in the family room, and 0.1% of our days in the blended living/dining/entertainment area. Which is all the more tragic considering what a colossal waste of space it is!So I finally decided to do something about it. Instead of having three separate “rooms” upon entering our home, I relocated hubby’s bar to the basement, moved our dining furniture into the family room, and turned the front of the house into a Great Room – which is a much more intelligent use of space. Since the area is quite large, let’s do the “Before” pictures in comparison to the “After” shots one room at a time. You may click to enlarge photos.
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| BEFORE – LIVING ROOM |
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| AFTER – TV AREA |
| BEFORE – DINING ROOM |
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| AFTER – GREAT ROOM |
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| BEFORE – BAR AREA |
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| AFTER – STILL THE GREAT ROOM! |
Paint:
NOTES
We love our new Great Room! And, we’re finally enjoying the awesome space in our home! I didn’t include pictures of the family-room-turned-dining-room because I’ll be posting about that separately later this week.
Re: our paint colour choice, since all the rooms mesh together… plus all the way up the stairs and through the upper hallway (did I mention we have an open concept? sheesh) we couldn’t really afford to go too crazy. I chose a very safe mix between beige and taupe… but you’d be amazed at how different the colour looks in different lights! In natural light, it’s downright taupe; with our lighting at night (which has a strong golden hue) the paint tends to look almost a pale yellow (as in the photos above). Regardless, it’s the perfect colour to set off our dark furniture and hardwood, and blends seamlessly with our green kitchen (yes green – but trust me, it’s a nice green).
The sectional was purchase from The Brick several moons ago but in our new room, we feel it takes on a contemporary (but timeless) look.
I also wanted to point out this neat little gadget we picked up at Home Depot: since we live in a semi, it was virtually impossible to fish the wires through the concrete once we mounted our TV. So instead of leaving the wires hanging (yuck!) we found this nifty Flat Screen TV Cord Cover Kit to hide the unsightly cables. A bonus: it can be painted to blend with your wall!
More Reno-cation wrap up to come!