Our den/tv room/man cave/family room is the room where we spend the most time in the house, when we're not sleeping. We watch TV, play games, work on the computer and just generally hang out in the room. Sometimes we're uncivilized and we eat dinner in there, too.
And with the chances of us hosting my Mom's family for Christmas this year being very high, the first floor needs to be in order (save the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom, which are projects too big to tackle right now).
That would be my deadline - Christmas. Actually, December 19th would be the day everyone comes over. That's 15 weeks, or 106 days.
Let's take a look at the den as it is currently.
For one thing, it's khaki-city in the corner shown here. The walls are khaki, the couch is khaki, the rug is khaki-ish. The first thing that will go is the wall color. It's left from the previous owner, and you can see the paint choosing process has started with swatches on the wall above the couch and next to the TV (below).
Don't get me started on the trim around the windows...why the previous owner put in trim that doesn't match anything else in the house, I do not understand. It's not even moulding, it's boards that have been poorly stained. That will be going and we're going to replace it with something that matches the rest of the house. Provided we don't take it down and find horror behind it.
Most of the furniture is staying in the room. Strike that...all of the furniture is staying in the room, except the little coffee table you see in the corner there, that's our old coffee table.
We like everything in the room except the couch, which we are not in love with. But we have small doors and hallways and this Ikea sofa was the only comfy thing in our price range last year (when we thought we had to have it) that would fit through our doors and around the necessary corners. It's only a year old and we're not ready to replace it yet. And we do like having the big sectional, and it being a sectional was the only thing that would get it in the room.
I can't say I really TRIED in this room. I bought the larger coffee table, and hunted down the couch, but other than that it was just a matter of putting in the furniture we already owned. There's nothing hanging on the walls, no curtains, and everything is black, brown or khaki. Boring.
But since it's the room we use the most, it will also be the most disruptive to our day-to-day getting painted and such. I think that's why I've been stalling so long. That and the fact that it's supposed to be "Adam's Room" and he's not exactly gung-ho about decorating.
So, I'm taking the reins. It will still be his room...sort of. I'll be asking his opinion a lot more this time than I normally would (making the shift from "never-ish" to "on most things"). Unlike those couples on the other shelter blogs who work together, I am a ruthless dictator that throws Adam a bone every once-in-a-while. I don't really think he minds, believe me.
The leather chairs seen here were cheap. $100 each at Big Lots. But they're good chairs. Comfortable and sturdy and they come in really handy when we have guests over. But the leather (possibly pleather?) is ruined. The cats like to run across them while they chase each other and their little claws have put a million pinholes and scratches in the leather. So, they will be getting reupholstered in some kind of durable fabric.
We'd like to add another book case. Adam reads a LOT, because he travels so much and he reads in the airport, in the plane, and while he's got down-time at customer sites. The amount he reads would bankrupt us if we bought books retail, but we started going to Daedalus Books a few years ago, and we make a few trips there a year, where Adam buys 20-30 books at a time.
The popcorn ceiling will be staying for the time being. Our Christmas deadline won't be permitting re-drywalling the ceiling. Someday we'll do away with it, but not now.
So, what's the plan? I made up a little mood board. Let's go over the play-by-play.
1. Colors - The walls will be green (still settling on the exact hue), and the trim will be off-white (the same Sherwin Williams Roman Column we've used throughout the house). I'll be tossing in brown, beige and ice blue accents.
2. Ceiling fan - something with mocha colored wood and sleek lines
3. Bookcase - again, hoping to add another one
4. Artwork - Adam likes buying art. We try to pick up a piece by a local artist as a souvenir whenever we go on trip somewhere. We have a whole stack of black and white photos just chillin' in the guest room closet. I'm hoping to bring them out and give them a home on the walls of the den.
5. Lamps - Sometimes I do some hand sewing on the sofa (as part of filling orders for my Etsy Shop), and need a good light source. The track lighting was doing a good job of that but it's going bye-bye, so the plan is to build a sofa-table level shelf in the corner along the wall behind the couch, that way we can add some lamps there and move the couch away from the wall (the air return behind the couch doesn't get air like it should, so moving the couch out should help with the air flow problem in the room).
6. A new throw blanket is in order. The off white afgan will be staying, it's fantastic and it was a wedding gift from my aunt, but we'll be adding new blanket, I hope.
7. The copper colored mini blinds are outta here. Replacing with wooden blinds, hopefully that will match closely with the fan blades.
8. The Ikea Ektorp sofa - she's staying
9. As is the Ikea Hemnes coffee table.
10. We need new/more throw pillows, in a bigger variety of sizes.
11. Adam loves our Toshiba Regza TV, though I doubt he'd mind upgrading to something bigger than the 42" we currently have, we're just not going to mention that as an option.
12. We already have 6 baskets that fit perfectly and serve as storage to stash remotes, game controllers, my wireless mouse and a few other odds and ends that would otherwise take up residence on top of the coffee table.
13. A stand in for the leather chairs. I'm digging the three fabric swatches shown at the left to recover the chairs, but I'm still on the hunt for something a little cheaper.
14. Rug...staying
15. This cabinet used to be in my bedroom in my parents house, and it was white. It was from Target, but they don't carry this line of furniture anymore. We painted it a couple of years ago and made a few alterations to it and it's now perfect for housing AV stuff. I'd like to figure out a better solution for the stuff that's under it right now though.
16. There is currently a brown table runner on top of this cabinet, I'd like to replace it with something to tie in the ice blue, and the zig zag stripe is very popular now.
There is also talk about adding surround sound speakers. Adam has wanted them for a long time, and who am I to deny a man surround sound in his man cave?
With any luck this will be an easy make over, consisting of painting and swapping some things out.
106 days and counting...
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