Finally, finally finishing posting these photos of our big renovation project! And this post has taken me almost a week to write because we've had 5 showings of our house in the first week it's been on the market. :)
The den/family room was a room that we weren't sure about renovating. We knew the paint was a bit outdated but we were also running out of time and weren't sure we had the money to replace the carpeting. But, it was the only room downstairs that we hadn't done and after we found the hardwood floors and had $1100 refunded (you can read Part 3 here), we decided to go for it. And I'm so glad we did!
You can see the paint before the renovation in this old photo. The bottom third was a dark burgundy, the top two-thirds was a light camel and we installed a white chair rail at the intersection. We also had huge dark valances in the room. It was definitely outdated.
When you walked into the room, all you really saw was the bookcases at the end of the room and then our desks right in the middle of the room. Basically, we converted a family room into a den. On the left side of the room was a dark leather couch under two large windows. It's a nice-sized room but we had a lot of big, dark furniture in it and it felt tiny and cramped.
This layout gives another look standing in front of the bookcases and looking towards the kitchen. The room was just totally crammed full of furniture, books and scrapbooking supplies. And the dark valances really brought the eye down and made it look even more closed in.
The first part of the process was to clear out the room and re-paint it. Which was a lot easier said than done. So, we didn't do it right away. LOL! Those bookcases were impossible to move, as were the desks. We had to take the desks apart and move them into the basement piece by piece. We moved the rest of the stuff to the center of the room for the time being and used a lot of drop cloths.
I started with the ceiling and here's some advice. If you paint walls in a room, please, please paint the ceiling, too. I'm done it both ways. I've been soooooo amazed at the amount of dirt on ceilings that I never noticed. A new coat of paint on the ceiling is a dramatic transformation. I had to do it to believe it, though.
I was also a bit surprised at how dark the camel color on the top portion of our walls really was. It looks like a light color but the new coat of China White from Benjamin Moore looks much better. Here's where I started.
Covering that burgundy paint was almost my undoing. It was not fun.
After everything was painted, we decided that we simply had to replace the carpeting, too. Moving the furniture revealed a whole lot more dirt than we had imagined. When we ripped up the carpet, look what we found. Yuck, yuck. This image was taken from the back wall looking into the kitchen. You can see the door to the patio, the closet and the furniture stored in the kitchen. And the dirt under the carpet. It was so gross.
And here's the new carpet. A nice, basic neutral carpeting.
Once again, I used my own photographs for the walls. I found these three frames at Target and enlarged 3 photos from Texas - the middle one is the tower at the University of Texas and the other ones are photos I took at Tom's family's ranch outside of San Antonio.
I used drapes from Target again. Not only was my budget very small for all of these home projects, but I also knew that drapes would have to stay with the house so I didn't want to spend too much on them. And more plants on clearance - winter is a great time to buy house plants for next-to-nothing, I've found!
I also wanted to keep things very light around the windows to take advantage of all the natural light that comes in through the huge windows on this wall.
See the quilt I made Tom on the sofa? It went perfectly in here. :)
And here's the finished room.
Cost breakdown: Paint for the walls and ceiling were approximately $80. The Target frames were $60 total for all three, the four plants were $35 and the pots were another $35. The drapery rods and drapes were also from Target - the rod cost $40 and the drapes were only $20. The carpeting was $860 from Lowe's and various new lamps and side tables were another $100. I decided to dip into the fund for the two chairs under the window - we simply didn't have enough furniture for this room. The two chairs I found at a discount shop locally and cost $289 for the pair.
Total cost for the family room: $1519 (our most expensive room by far - because of the carpeting and chairs)
Final cost for the entire downstairs renovations (4 rooms, a hallway, and staircase): $3155
