I feel like I’ve shown you just about every room in our new condo, but there’s one that has been noticeably absent.

The biggest room in the house. The Family Room.

We’ve made some major progress on this space, but I haven’t yet shared anything on the blog because I’m still figuring it out. But then I thought…why don’t I have my readers figure it out right along with me, because that’s much more true to life.

So as you can see by the above home layout, the living room/dining room is the first space you see when you enter our unit. To the right is a large (awkwardly shaped) fireplace and some large windows, and then to the left is our kitchen and the hallway to the back of our home.

Here are the MLS listing photos of the room (which are definitely a different home style than our own, but everyone can decorate their home any which way they want, right?!)

When buying the house, we were able to see the potential in the space. The large expansive windows? Love! The open concept? Love! The light-filled room? Love! Yep, we knew we could make it fabulous.

Here’s what it looked like when we bought the house, before moving in and before doing a thing to the walls or floors. It stayed looking like this for about 24 hours, then we stained the floors dark and painted the walls gray. Much more our style already! So then came our big dilemma. The layout for this space.

It’s a really hard layout because of the fireplace, the windows, and then the entryway door. Because of these 3 features, we were at first a little uncertain as to which wall should be our “focal point.” Do we put the TV over the fireplace? Do we put our couch in front of the fireplace? Should the couch face the windows or face the large blank wall? If the couch faces the wall, will it be weird that you see the back of the couch when you enter? Ahh so many possibilities and so many uncertainties.

In the end, we decided that we really wanted to add some expansive built-ins to the large blank wall (opposite the fireplace), for storage and to hold our television. Plus it would make for a great focal point right when you open the door to our place. Yes, that would mean that our large sectional would have to face the wall (and have its back to the front door)…but hopefully the built-ins would be so beautiful that you would be looking at them and not the back of the couch. So we came up with a built-in gameplan, hired a contractor, and he got to work building them in his shop over the course of 3-months.

In the meantime, we put an old piece of furniture in the room to hold our TV and flanked it with our Ikea desk chairs. Not perfect, but it did the job.

And I also bought a rug, bar cart, and mirror and jazzed up the fireplace.

While our built-ins were being well…built…I started daydreaming about the other aspects of this space. This room really stuck out at me as inspiration….

Image via Cecy J Interiors

Pretty dreamy, right? I’m in love with that sofa and just love the bright & happy feel of this room. I also love how the couch is opened up to the rest of the room. Right now we are kinda forced to have our couch with the “L” facing the windows (because we have a chaise and the right portion of the couch is longer than the left…if that makes any sense!) I’d love to find a new couch (preferably less-bulky and sans chaise) that can open up to the rest of the room. I just think it would make our open concept home work a little bit better, don’t you think?

Anyways, enough couch ranting. Here’s what’s left on our list.

FAMILY ROOM TO-DO LIST:

• Stain floors
• Paint walls
• Change out overhead light fixture
• Add large rug
• Hire someone to make custom built-ins for TV wall
• Organize cords & electronics
• Accessorize built-ins
• Buy a new coffee table (or a thrifted one!)
• Find a smaller couch (maybe a gray one)
• Refresh the pillows & their color palette
• Add window treatments to front large windows
• Get fireplace cleaned so it’s usable!
• Add art to the wall near the window
• If there’s enough space, add a chair across from couch
• Add bar cart

Next family room update, I’m going to show you our dreamy new built-ins! I seriously cannot wait. In the meantime, I’ll be sofa shopping & on the hunt for a cool coffee table. Wish me luck!