About a year ago, we painted and got new furniture for our sun room, which we’re now using as a family room.  The new furniture has worked out great and we really enjoy having a TV room on the main floor of the house, but the room has never quite felt “finished”.  So, this week, I placed an order for a few more smaller pieces of furniture to place along the walls and in the corners of the room to help make it feel more complete.

Leaning Bookshelves

The first pieces we purchased were the 25.5″ Leaning Bookshelves from JCPenney.  I’ve liked this style of shelf for a while because it’s so airy and seems like it won’t take up so much visual space in the room, but most of the ones we see are too wide to fit the space in the sun room.  At 25.5″ wide, these are just the right size to fit between the patio doors and the corners of the room, with one shelf placed on each side of the door.  I’m still a little concerned about the quality of the shelves, but since we plan to use them just for pictures and other decorative items that won’t be as heavy as books, I’m hoping we won’t have a problem.  The reviews on JCPenney’s website indicated that the shelves in the espresso finish (the color we ordered) seem to be of higher quality materials than the same shelves in a black finish.  It seems a little strange to me that the material would be different based on the color, but I’m still hopeful that we’ll be happy with the quality when we receive them.

Accent Table

I also ordered an 18″ diameter accent table from Target for placing in an opposite corner of the room.  It will be just the right size to tuck into the corner and hold a smaller potted plant or two that are now awkwardly sitting on the floor.  My only concern with this piece is that the wood color blends well with the color of the rest of the furniture in the room (which I’m hoping shouldn’t be a problem since there are multiple wood tones in the table top).

I haven’t received shipment notifications on either one yet, so it’s probably wishful thinking that they’ll be here by the end of this week, but I can’t wait to get everything assembled to see how it looks in the room.  Hopefully we won’t be disappointed!

We found the “Rate My Space” site tonight and decided to post our updated family room/sun room there. Check it out.

Over the last couple of weeks, the furniture we ordered for our sun room back in January has trickled in and everything has finally been delivered. We’re really happy with everything, with the exception that the couch should have had three cushions instead of two. We’re working with the store on it and it sounds like they’ll be re-ordering a new one for us next week, which we should hopefully have in another month or two. Here are some pictures:

We also wound up buying a new LCD television for the room last weekend. It’s a 46″ Sony, model # KDL-46XBR4, which we’ve been really happy with so far. The picture looks pretty good, even without an HD signal, and there’s only a minimal amount of reflection on the screen, which is something we were pretty concerned about given the large number of windows and doors in the room. We currently have the TV hooked up to the home theater PC we built a few weeks ago and it’s been working out well so far. The wireless-N network we’re using to stream our recorded television content has been performing really well, with no skips. We still need to get a remote control working with it (so we don’t have to use the keyboard to drive the TV anymore), but it’s pretty much done otherwise.

We still need to hang some pictures on the walls and I’m planning to get a bunch of green plants to fill in the corners of the room that are basically empty now, but we’re excited about the transformation so far and about spending more time in a room that we basically haven’t used since we moved in last fall.

I called yesterday to get an update on our furniture order for the sun room. The tables and television stand were delivered a couple weeks ago and the rest of the furniture was supposed to be here by the middle of March. I talked to our decorator yesterday and it sounds like our sofa is in, but the rest of the furniture won’t be here until the end of the month. The couch has been sent to the delivery company, so hopefully we’ll hear from them sometime soon so we can schedule the delivery. I’m really looking forward to being able to spend more time in the sun room once we actually have furniture!

This morning I spent about an hour replacing about 30 outlet and light switch covers in our master bedroom, master bathroom, and sun room. It sounds like a silly thing to think about replacing, but it made such a difference – in the bedroom especially.

The master bedroom and bathroom (and also the kitchen, hallway, and third floor) had oak outlet covers when we moved in. I’m not a big fan of the wood finish since it’s such a contrast to the paint, but I’ve felt kind of guilty about replacing them with the standard $.39 variety since I know the oak ones are probably about $7 a piece new. Since we’ve painted the bedroom, though, I keep thinking how much more I’d like it without the wood outlet covers, so I finally broke down and spent a whopping $13.00 at Lowe’s last night to buy plain cream ones, which I installed this morning. Here are before and after photos:

Before

After

I’m happy with the way the standard covers look, but I’m not sure what to do with the nice wood ones we took off. So, if anyone happens to be in the market for some oak light switch and outlet covers, I can make you a great deal! We’ve got about a dozen outlet covers, 3 switch covers, and another 3 with the rectangular cut-out for GFCI outlets, etc.

In the sun room, the outlet covers had been wallpapered and still had a bunch of glue on them, so I figured they could stand an update while I was at it. There’s really not much of a difference in how they look until you get up close and notice that the new ones aren’t sticky, but I’m still glad to have that crossed off my list of things to do. Here’s the “after” photo:

Some of the new family room furniture for our sun room arrived this week. The end tables, TV stand, lamps, pictures, and a couple of accent pillows were delivered on Wednesday. All of the seating and the area rug for the room are still coming and should hopefully be in sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Here’s a couple photos of the new items in our sun room:

The room still feels really incomplete, but I think I’m pleased with how our furniture selections look so far. It’ll be so nice when the rest of it comes in so that we can actually start using the sun room.

Our painter has made a ton of progress in the last couple of days. The final coat has been put on the family room and it’s completely done now with the exception of a couple of places that still need touching up. The color we chose called Nuthatch. It’s a Sherwin Williams paint and the painter selected a low-sheen eggshell finish since it wasn’t available in satin. Here’s what the room looks like now:

We were afraid the color would be a little dark, but I think it’s going to be ok with all the light coming in through the windows and doors.

The painter has also been working on the master suite. In the master bathroom, everything has been primed and he’s working on the final coat. The part above the trim is called Simplify Beige and the part below it will be a color called Sand Dune, which is just slightly darker. They’re also Sherwin Williams colors and they’re both a satin finish. The color on the wall is just a primer right now, so it’ll be a little darker when the final coat goes on, but here’s what it looks like so far:

The master bedroom is about half-way done. The trim is being painted a color called Modest White in a semi-gloss finish. The painter made sure to tell us that he’s using the Proclassic variety of paint on the baseboards since it will dry harder and hold up better. And the walls are being painted the same Sand Dune color as what’s in the bathroom. The final coat is done on both the trim and the walls in the first room, but he hasn’t started on the second half of the room yet. Here’s what it looks like so far:

The painter started in our sun room and master bedroom today. I was shocked by the amount of progress he made while we were at work. He got a coat of tinted primer on in the sun room. It’s such a huge improvement over the green! It’s only about a 75% tint, so the color will be darker when he puts the top coat on, but so far, we’re really liking it.

In the master bedroom and bathroom, he started priming the trim. It’s a little hard to see in the picture, but it’s looking a lot crisper than the yellow-y cream that was on the walls and trim before. I’m so glad we decided to paint the trim.

Since the trim was a semi-gloss finish and we had wallpaper on the sun room walls, he chose to prime both with an oil-based primer, which has made the house smell just a little, but so far it hasn’t been too bad. I’m really excited to see what everything is going to look like with the final colors!

Our painter stopped by yesterday and he’s ready to start painting our master bedroom suite and sun room tomorrow! He’s going to paint the trim in our master bedroom and bathroom the same shade of white as the rest of the house (it’s a more yellow-y shade now) and the walls are going to be the same tan-ish color that’s in our guest room. In the sun room, he’s going to paint the walls a darker shade of brown. I can’t wait to see what those rooms will look like with the new colors.

We spent today getting ready for the painting to start. We moved a bunch of furniture away from the walls, scrubbed them down a couple more times to try to get the excess wallpaper glue off, and took down some window treatments and other hardware. We also emptied out our bedroom closet and the linen closet in the bathroom. Our upstairs is a complete disaster now, but it will be worth it when the painting is all done at the end of the week.

Fabric samples for the furniture we ordered for our sun room came in the mail today. It’s funny how differently we remembered our selections. Both of us thought we’d picked way too light of a shade for the new couch, but when the samples came, we were happy to see it is a nice shade of tan.

I tried scanning the fabrics they sent and the textures came out a little stronger than they really look, but the colors are pretty accurate. The tan color on the left is a textured microfiber that’ll go on the couch and matching chair. The lighter fabric on the upper right is a more heavily textured microfiber that’ll go on the over-sized ottoman we’ll be using as a coffee table. The fabric in the bottom right will be used on throw pillows. We’ll also have a brown leather recliner that they didn’t send a sample for.

Our designer mentioned in her note that some of the furniture is in already. None of the custom pieces are done yet, but some of the tables, lamps, and artwork are in. They should hopefully be delivered sometime in the next week or so. I’m so excited to see them in our house!

We also heard from the painter recently and he thinks he’ll be able to start sometime next week, so now we’re just working on finalizing our paint color selections. Here’s what we’re thinking about. The trim is already painted the lightest color. We’re thinking we’ll paint most of the room the darker of the other two colors and use the middle shade as an accent color. We’re still a little undecided about what to paint the accent color. One option is to paint the entire wall where the TV will go the. The other option is to just paint the portion of the wall that’s directly behind the TV, which is built out about a half inch due to the fireplace on the other side of the wall. We’re not sure if that will look nice to accent that or if it’ll look weird. Either way, though, we’re excited to see the room come together soon.