Use What You Have Decorating

I’ve never truly loved my family room. I’m holding out love waiting for new furniture after the kids are a bit older. For now, I’m making do with black leather bachelor furniture that came with the husband almost 12 years ago. I figured they’ve both lasted this long, sooooooo… lol.

Do you have a room like this? It’s a room that leads to other rooms resulting in a lack of wall space and awkward traffic patterns. When you have French doors, a large entry way from another room, and lots of windows, you have fewer options.

If sans kids, I’d pull the furniture away from the walls and really have some fun with it, but for now we need room for rumpus play.

First, the layout – it was a bit off balance to allow for free flowing traffic through the living room in the warmer months, and so the big chair could be by the corner windows.

Now here’s the tweaked arrangement – we brought up a mildly attractive area rug from the basement in an attempt to better balance the room. I think a larger rug would be more effective, but the price was right for this one {wink}. I’m holding out on any shopping for this room til I get to do the whole room they way I want to.

Now for some “real” pictures. Note that we also tweaked the tired old mantel display. We used existing frames I found in the basement and printed out some vacation pictures in black and white. I also spotted a couple lovely black and white vases that I brought up. Plus we pulled out a few minor Halloween décor items (copper pumpkins).

First, the view from the kitchen:

And now, the view from the Living room.

Just for kicks, here’s how it looked before we moved in (saved the old MLS listing photos – that’s all I ever saw before moving in – hubby picked out the house without me):

I guess the moral of the story (if there is one) is always check in your basement before you go shopping!

What “use what you have” stories to you have?