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     This is the first time that I have liked this room enough to photograph it, ugly concrete floors and all.  I have been working on this room for over four years now.  It is a decorating challenge to say the least.  It is long and narrow but I only have a ten by ten area to fit in enough seating for our family of six and our visitors.  There isn’t much natural light.  There’s that weird little ceiling, jutting, thingy on the left (there’s one on the right side too but not visible in this post, click here to view).  The garage door opens into this room (pictures coming soon in Part Three).  And there is a closet across from the garage door that shaves about four by four chunk of usable space from the room. 

     Besides installing the wood floors, we are planning to make a coffee table.  Our current table is pretty beat.  It is also too big for the space.  You should have about eighteen inches of clearance from coffee table to couch, twelve minimum.  We have  maybe eight inches.  Building our own coffee table will allow us to have the look we want, the price we want and the size we want.

     I want to point out a couple of things I am especially happy with.  I love my drop cloth curtain.  It has a great texture, and drape.  It is opaque enough for privacy and blocking afternoon sun glare (it’s a west-facing sliding glass door) but translucent enough to allow adequate light in.  Best of all it was budget friendly at only $10.00.  I did have to hem it to fit the door but that only took 20 minutes start to finish.  I am also glad to say I found a permanent home for my thrift store finds.

     I originally had the wall on the right as an accent wall.  I changed it so the fireplace wall is the accent/focal wall now.  Not only does it make more sense to highlight the fireplace but it also makes the room appear more balanced.  When we moved in, this fireplace was walled over.  My handy hubby uncovered it and built this new one.   Plans for the near future in this spot  include building an entertainment system for the tv and possibly a bookshelf. 

     Goodness, it seems a little premature for a reveal after I just got done listing all the things we are still planning to do.  I guess I can only justify the reveal at this time because after all we have done, I am finally happy with this room and it feels cozy and family friendly now.

     This is a project I have been working on.  I decided to make this small wall, which was wasted space in my family room, into my makeshift mudroom. The entrance from the garage is just to the right but it opens directly into the room.  It is a weird room.  Lots of angles, long and narrow and despite the pictures above dimly lit.  I will save all the gory details and provide more pictures when I am done with the other side of the room.  Anyway, I bought the hooks and letters at Hobby Lobby in the unfinished wood craft section of the store.  I painted the hooks with some leftover black paint.  I decoupaged the letters with scrapbook paper, also from Hobby Lobby.  The hooks were $4.00 each.  The letters were about $1.50 each.  The scrapbook paper was $.60 per sheet.  I painted the wall behind the hooks green before I installed my hooks (okay, my husband installed them for me).  The paint is Lemon Verbena by Sherwin Williams SW 7726.  I have a hard time picking out good shades of green.  They either have too much of a yellow undertone or too much blue for my taste.  I think this green is perfect.  It is both earthy and sophisticated.  It also looks good in different lighting.  My favorite is direct sun (from a west facing window) but it also looks good in the  incandescent and fluorescent lights I have in my family room. The paint was $18.00, so all in all, I spent just under $40.00 for this project.   I really am loving the black and white with the green.  Best of all, we all have a place for everything and everything is in it’s place (for the moment anyway).

     I am a huge fan of wallpaper.  I don’t think I’ve met a wallpaper I didn’t like.  Of course some wallpapers are better in smaller doses.   My husband on the other hand loathes the stuff.  Maybe too many bad memories of the dated wallpaper that covered our house when we moved in.  I have to admit, it is ironic that I would spend an entire summer stripping wallpaper just to long to put more up.  But, wall coverings have come a long way from the mid-80′s. 

      Well, I got the call the other day from my local wallpaper store that they finally had some discontinued wallpaper books and I could come by and pick up for $2.00 each.  There were only two I liked so I bought them and brought them home and started cutting them up.  I had a ton of unused frames sitting around so I filled them up with the wallpaper and hung them up in the laundry/office.  The wallpaper books make it so easy to coordinate patterns and colors.  If you are like me and afraid of commitment, or if you are just looking for a cheap way to fill up a empty wall you may want to check out your local wallpaper store.  If you don’t have a bunch of unused frames around, you could try one of the dollar stores, a garage sale, flea markets or goodwill.  I think funky and mismatched frames just add to the overall effect.  Best of all, when you are tired of the look, just get a new wallpaper book and switch out the papers.  No scraping required!

I’m adding this post to The Inspired Room’s Gallery Wall Party!

     This is a picture from my brother and sister-in-law’s new house.  They have a couple of play areas for their kids.  This one is more of an area to kick back and do quiet activities.  The other one  is for PLAY.  It has a built in slide, two levels and a pass-through from my nephew’s bunk bed to the upper level of the play room next door.  My sister-in-law is soon to paint the walls with monsters (cute monsters) so, I will post when she is finished.

     I thought this wall treatment would look good in a nursery or a little girl’s room. I would do this on an accent wall or maybe all the way around the room under chair rail molding.  All I did was paint my wall color then I made the flowers from wallpaper.  I purchased an outdated wallpaper book from Wallpaper Warehouse for $2.00.  I chose three different wallpapers for the petals and three different wallpapers for the stems and leaves.  I drew my pattern, cut them out, wet them and stuck them on the wall.  Very quick and easy. 

     The wallpaper store only had a book of nursery wallpaper for sale.  I keep going back hoping that they will have something more grownup and modern so I can try different designs.  It would be fun to do birds, branches, or something graphic (circles, squares) in a black damask or metallic grass cloth.  As soon as I get a new book I’ll post some more ideas.