Nearly Starting From Scratch: Our Front Room

We have a room in our house that doesn't have a real name.  It's the first room you see as you walk in the house.  It's supposed to be a formal living room, although, I suppose you could make it a formal dining room if that was your thing.  We have called it a play room since we moved in because it is the only non-office room that is carpeted on the main level.  It was the room we gated off when Charm was 1 and getting into everything!  Now we have a full basement play space, so we don't need the main floor room to be so kid focused, especially since it is the first room you see upon entering the house.  We still want some toy storage in the room, but we don't want toys to be the primary focus of the room.

Over the course of our nearly 18 months in this house, the room has looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And most recently this:

It's all cleared out!  Talk about nearly starting from scratch! Yup, we're working with a big green couch that used to be in the living room at our old house:

It is the same couch that used to be in the basement until we moved it upstairs when we cleared out our old nursery and moved the little kid furniture that used to be in the front room upstairs. 

Old Basement Set Up:

New Upstairs Sitting Room:

Did you follow that?  Yeah, we play a full-time game of 'let's rearrange the furniture' around here.

As far as inspiration for this space, I narrowed down the possibilities to two looks I loved. This one is from Jen at IHeart Organizing who used standard IKEA Billy Bookshelves and created a built in look with some molding, wood and paint:

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Isn't that look amazing? 

Inspiration also struck while e-flipping through the last issue of House of Fifty magazine.

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Amber Interiors

I have just been loving the look of gold with black and white. The credenza is AMAZING and the sunburst mirror is just gorgeous.

The way I calculated it, the cost for the IKEA based built in look would be about $225-$250 depending on wood costs for our room. The House of Fifty look would vary based on the pieces I was able to track down.

Bill and I chatted about our options, and after we came across this piece on Craigslist for $100, we decided to go for the House of Fifty look.

We love the sophisticated look it provides and the closed door storage for toys.

Here is how the room looks with our new credenza:

Admittedly, it's not that impressive currently, BUT I think it's going to be awesome once the rest of the pieces in the room are in place!

After getting the credenza in place, I decided to try out some side chairs that we already have on hand:

Here are the side chairs that had been in our dining room until they got bumped by the settee.

These chairs looked good in my opinion, but I wanted to try a couple other looks.  Plus the grand plan is to slipcover these chairs and get them back in the dining room.

Here I used a pair of extra Target Modern Stacking Chairs that we had in the office.

(We got ours for $17.48 for two chairs when they went on 75% off clearance in store.)

These chairs didn't look so good in this space, in my opinion.

Finally, I tried out our Lou Lou Ghost Chairs from this post.  I love them!!  

Maybe some day I'll get a pair of the adult size version, but for now...this works!  Plus, this is still a game/reading room for the kids, so I like that there are a couple of kid sized chairs in the space.

Next, I rolled out the rug I recently purchased (see this post), and added a coffee table that we had in the basement (originally purchased at Goodwill for $12).  This rug is a temporary one for this space, but it works for now and can be 'stored' here while it's intended resting place awaits a makeover.

While the room is shaping up, here are the items we plan on tackling in the near future:

1. Sunburst Mirror
2. Credenza Lamps and Accessories
3. Perhaps Larger Side Chairs?
4. Pillows for Side Chairs
5. Gallery Wall like this from Emily Henderson:

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6. We'd also love to place a large wall mirror in this corner of the room for the kiddos:

They love to look in a mirror and sing and dance.  I can just picture us coming to this room at night for a little post dinner entertainment!

7. Curtain Rod and Curtains

8. Rug

9. Another Chair by the Window

10. Paint the room and remove/patch the four mid-wall outlets that were used by the previous owners to light up their formal family portraits.



We've already completed a couple of these items, and I'll be posting about those updates in the near future. Some updates will take some time to tackle. Regardless, the space is already looking so much better than it did before!!