Good Bye 1975!

We finally put our mark on our new house!  The family room in our house is a pretty large room that had a lot of potential, but it was stuck in the 70's...big time.  It's the room we found ourselves in the most, but it needed a serious face lift.  We love having people over, yet wanted a cozy room for our family as well. Brian has always wanted a bar in the house (yeah, he's got Wisconsin in his blood), and when we stumbled on a sweetheart deal on good ol' Craigslist, our plan took shape.

With wood paneling on the walls, dark built ins, drab dirty carpeting, awful light fixtures, dark faux beams, and an outdated fireplace, we knew we'd be gutting the room and starting with a clean slate.

The first thing I did was white wash the fireplace.  Our initial plan was to install a new fireplace insert so I wasn't too careful with the whitewash.  Had to clean that mess up after we decided to keep looking for just the right thing for the room.  Ooops! 

Then we were on to the demo....the favorite part for ALL of the boys in the house.

Buh-bye beams!

See ya tile that's impossible to clean!

We found a few surprises and dealt with those.  Thank God for a good contractor working with us.

We'd gone back and forth with how to handle some built-ins that were jutting out into the garage.  Brian figured out what to do with them while I was away.  Imagine my surprised when I opened the garage door and saw the inside of my family room.

 

Then we reassembled, starting with the walls.

And moved on to the floors, lights, and painting the mantel.

Notice the dust on the floor....THAT drove me crazy!!!

And then finally the bar.

Thank you Nate!  You are amazing!!!  I know Brian also really enjoyed Nate's help...I could hear them laughing for hours after I'd gone to bed.

All that with only one trip to the ER.  

We're still settling in a bit, but the project turned out better than I could have hoped for.  It's now a warm room for our family that functions really well for entertaining.

The boys love it too!  A fun dinner of their choice to break it in...nachos and "kiddie cocktails."

 

 

It was so nice to work together on a project again, it had certainly been a while.  I love putting time and effort into our home and the sense of accomplishment that comes with it.  Next up....getting rid of the PINK carpeting in the sunroom.