The room IKEA built...

That’s what Clean Fresh Hubby calls it, but I call it our wonderful new family room!



I wish I had some better “before” pictures to share, but the room was so hideous, I couldn’t bear to waste film on it! So, I have scanned in the picture from the real estate brochure we received when we came to look at the house 3.5 years ago.



Yes, it has a lodge feel to it. Yes, those are plywood beams running along the ceiling and down the walls. Yes, that is some pretty ugly paneling. And yes, that wallpaper is from the 1970s. (I’m actually surprised we could look past all this and still buy the house!)

Anyway, for the past 3.5 years, this room has been pretty useless. We live in a tri-level home and there is a large staircase leading from our living room down to this family room, so we were never quite sure what to do with it. Do we treat it like an extension of the living room? Make it its own space?

We didn’t know what to do, so basically, this room served as a holding ground for an extra couch, a piano and a china cabinet. We did add the French door to close this room off from the exercise room and office in the back, as well as removed the wood beams, wallpaper (hideous project, much cursing) and replaced the paneling with more updated wainscoting, but that was about it for the past few years.

Then this spring, I got a steal on a chocolate brown sectional sofa at a department store’s furniture outlet. I mean STEAL. So we had this big sofa delivered and it sat down there, unused for another few months until we could figure out what the heck the purpose of this room was going to be.

With a big comfy sectional, it just screamed out to be our new TV room. But I was also feeling that I needed to have my own work space… Clean Fresh Hubby has an office in the back of the house for all his work and music stuff, while my laptop and I migrate around the house. So we added “mommy desk area” to the list of priorities for the room.

I spent time sketching out layouts for the room and kept hitting stumbling blocks, the piano being the biggest. With the strange ledges we have along the wall due to the split level design, there was only one wall that it would fit on, and that was the wall where we wanted to put the soon-to-be purchased big TV. So we moved the piano to the exercise room, which I’m beginning to refer to as the “room for things we don’t use that much!” With that behemoth out of the way, it was easier to visualize the layout.

Since the walls were relatively unobstructed with the piano gone, I painted the room for the third time since we’ve lived there, but this time I got it right. I chose Sherwin Williams Status Bronze, which at first I worried would be too dark for a basement family room, but with the crisp white wainscoting, it worked perfectly. And I felt that white furniture would pop against the color.

Enter the IKEA catalog.

Seriously, I love this store. We are fortunate to have two locations within 30 minutes of our house so many a day was spent wandering the displays, trying to figure out what would work best for our room and our budget. (And their cafeteria serves the best Swedish meatballs with Lingonberry sauce, which was a total bonus!)

With catalog and sketches in hand, I made three trips to the store to purchase a media stand (Lack $49.99), coffee table (Expedit $69.99), book shelf (Expedit $69.99), desk extension (Expedit, $50), and two single book shelves (Expedit $59.99/ea).

I am usually wary of put-it-together-yourself furniture, but I have to say, this was easy-peasy. Most definitely required two people, but the directions were clear, all the holes were where they were supposed to be, and we had everything assembled and in place within two hours. Not bad!



The rug I got on clearance at Target for $35 and it really helped pull the whole room together. I’m still fussing with the bookshelves by the TV, trying to figure out the best arrangement, but it will get there.



I absolutely love my desk area… my laptop now has a permanent home, I can keep all my decorating/cooking/fitness magazines close at hand, as well as all my various fitness/health books, and it is totally just MY space. And how fun is my little yellow office chair? (Another IKEA steal at $24!)



In the meantime, it has become our favorite room in the house, a totally comfy, cozy space to snuggle up and watch TV during this miserably cold winter!