Friday, March 04, 2016

My Family Room

Our family room is a very busy room. It gets hammered by all five of us. We use it for parties, TV watching, exercise, napping, you name it and it usually happens in this room. After ten years of living here, and various furniture layouts (click here and here for how it once looked), this current layout seems to be the best use of space.

It seems like a big room but when you consider all the space we have to leave open for walkways, it really isn't very big. and because it isn't very big we have to have appropriate sized furniture. I would love to have room to have two couches but that is not possible--simply no room. The fireplace takes up one entire wall and the TV entertainment system takes up another. Shucks.

Our 5-yr old Keaton sofa is only 78" long. And while I still love it I was a fool to order a down couch. Look at how slouchy and sloppy it looks. I am ordering new cushions for it because I am sick of how sloppy it always looks. We fluffed all the cushions last night and still they look sloppy. Do not ever order a down couch! Do not let how happy your butt cheeks are in the showroom, sitting on that sofa, allow you to be suckered into paying extra for down! You have been warned!

The coffee table is from Crate & Barrel's small-scale furniture line. Most regular coffee tables were way too big for this space. 


The green cabinet is from Four Chairs. I had the paint custom matched to that crazy green. I want to paint it navy blue now.  It used to be in my kitchen years ago but then I moved it here to be a TV stand. I believe good furniture should be able to live happily in many different rooms. 


The ottoman is the now-discontinued Ikea Klippan footstool slipcovered by me. I simply gotta have a cushy place to rest my feet when watching TV!

All the furniture in this room is several years old, but this chair is brand new this week! It completes this room, finally.

It is a swivel chair. I have been wanting a swivel chair forever so that you could easily turn it for TV watching and spare your poor neck muscles. Like I said, this small room requires some creativity to maximize important functions like TV watching. We like TV in this house.

The gallery wall was 'curated' four years ago, here's a tutorial for that. I rotate the photos/artwork sort of regularly. 

Notice in the bottom right corner of the photo above my husband's adjustable Power Block weights. This is also our exercise room. (Yes it is tacky to store them in open view but I haven't figured out a better alternative yet. My weights are smaller and fit under the green chairs.)  Just move the coffee table and ottoman and sweat away at dark-thirty in the morning. Five brutal days a week.


My green arm chairs are the Kara chair from Mitchell Gold. These are down filled just like the sofa but for some reason they don't have that slouchy look. Thank goodness! I chose to have them stain-guarded 5 years ago and thankfully that has helped them hold up really well. Too well. In fact I am tired of the green upholstery and want them recovered but it is in perfect condition. Nuts. The pillows are blue linen embroidered by me. Buy the pillows in my etsy shop.  Buy the embroidery designs here to make them yourself.

My fireplace has the ugliest tile ever but that's what the last homeowners chose so here I am ten years later still living with it. I call it Baby Barf with a touch of gray. I still have not found the perfect artwork so a simple mirror just leans against the wall. 


I keep the mantle sparsely decorated with a few vases, an unframed print I bought at the garden tomb in Jerusalem last year, and an orchid that my husband somehow gets to bloom every few months, year after year.

This corner has lots of unsightly cords so a big plant hides them nicely. A basket holds my handmade quilts, and our family photo is a gallery-wrapped canvas print from Costco. I made the drapes four years ago-- here's a tutorial.  The white table is from Ikea.


The Van Gogh artwork is from Art.com and was blogged about here. The table is at least 10 years old, purchased from Pier One Imports. It used to be my bedside table. The blue gourd lamps are from here. 

Lastly the rug is from Rugs Usa. It is 100% wool and was on sale for $300. It sheds like a dog. I thought after four years of owning it it would go completely bald and would stop shedding but nope. We vacuum up wooly-dust-bunnies every few days. Nuts. It's lovely but you have been warned.

I like an eclectic house. I don't like anything to match too much; I'd rather have things coordinate, that way I can move items from room to room when I get bored. Free makeover, ya know? 

Oh and look at that messy kitchen in the background. I do not pretend to have a well-put-together life. We are messy people on the inside and outside. Life is hard dang it. Pretty things put a smile on my face, I make no apologies about that. Sometimes I take issue with home tours on blogs because everything looks perfect when life never is. So please know this blog post is just a snapshot of how my house looks sometimes, not all the time. Ok rarely.

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