A dated basement gets a cozy & casual farmhouse makeover. This post shows how you could easily update a room using your current furniture, a little bit of paint, and a few decorative accessories.
This post contains affiliate links. You can read my full disclosure here.
The family room reveal day is finally here! In full disclosure, this room has been done since August, but I’m just now getting around to photographing and sharing it with you. This room was my summer project and it’s now November…so….? (That’s teacher-mom life for you!)
I’ve also been inspired to revamp my entire house to reflect my current design style. As you can image, this is a HUGE undertaking and I’m on house-project-overload. I have 8 million DIY projects going on and I’m bouncing from project to project before even finishing the last one. I can get a little looney over here!
Even though it’s taken me forever to finally get this up on the blog-we’ve really been enjoying the new space! Everyone seems to be spending much more time down in the basement. The boys come down to watch TV, play their Xbox, and hang out in the adjacent playroom. We’ve enjoyed movie nights and family get-togethers in the new room-it’s a cozy and fun place to hang out.
Want to take a closer look? C’mon on down…I’ll show you around!
Our family room is located in our finished basement. Here’s the full room view as you come down the stairs and make a left into the family room. This is sort of an L-shaped room with the playroom tucked behind the wall on the right.
Before…
Just so you can get a full appreciation of how much this room has transformed with just a few simple changes, check out the before photo…
Fresh Paint
The first thing I did to this room was to give it a fresh coat of paint. The previous color was an icy baby blue and I wanted to brighten it up and create a neutral backdrop. I chose Repose Gray by Sherwin Williams. I shared in my previous post about how much I love this color and I haven’t changed my mind one bit!
Repose Gray is a beautiful color. It’s a tad on the warmer side, but not deep enough to be a “greige.” It’s light and neutral, so it could be used with either warm or cool decor colors. I absolutely love it! If you’re looking for a light gray that doesn’t go green or blue, I highly recommend this color.
Here’s my favorite review of Repose Gray.
I also painted the trim. I used Sherwin William’s Alabaster. This is a soft warm white without being too yellow. I love this white so much that I decided to use it on my kitchen cabinets and all of the trim in the rest of the house. Slowly but surely, we’ve been working to update all of the paint colors in the house.
Here’s more information on Alabaster.
Changing the paint color has had the biggest impact in this room transformation! It now feels light and airy and coordinates with the furniture we already had. Winning!
You may have heard it before, and it’s totally true that a can of paint may be one of the least expensive, but the most dramatic way to update a room.
Restore Old and Saggy Furniture
Once all of the walls were painted, I knew I needed to do something with my furniture. The sofa and chairs were old, worn, and really saggy. I just wanted to throw in the towel and buy all new furniture, but I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money while making over this room.
When weighing out all of my options, I decided that I’d rather use the money that I would have spent on new furniture in other areas of the house. (A kitchen refresh is in the works, ya’ll!)
That’s when I decided to at least try to clean-up and repair the sofa and chairs that we already had. Surprisingly, I was able to fix them up quite a bit! They certainly aren’t new, but they look a million times better and the best part is that I don’t hate them anymore. Yah!
I keep calling this, “Project Sofa Restoration” and you can read all about how I fixed them up {here}. This was a huge money saver! If you have an old saggy sofa, you’ll definitely want to check out that post. ?
New Furniture Arrangement
Since the furniture was in better shape, I rearranged the room a bit. I moved the TV cabinet from the right wall and sandwiched it between the two bookshelves.
This created an entertainment center of sorts and is now the focal point in the room. It also fills up the far back wall, which anchors the room and makes the room appear larger.
The couch stayed put and I swung one of the armchairs around to create a cozy seating area that didn’t block the view of the TV.
Bookshelf Organization & Media Storage
These bookshelves were our first furniture purchase after we got married. Ian and I still remember and talk about our first trip to Ikea as a married couple. We were aimlessly walking around trying to pick out furniture for our new apartment. We ended up scoring these bookshelves in the scratch-and-dent section.
We’ve been married for over twelve years now and these bookshelves are still kicking it! I’ve debated and talked about painting or staining them, but for nostalgia sake, they are staying the same. (For now anyway! ?)
These were the old Hemnes series shelves. Ikea no longer makes this particular style, but here’s the link to similar.
The bookshelves hold all our family books. We are avid readers and our book preferences are widely varied. It’s really a melting pot of books-even the boys’ picture book have their own little shelf.
I like keeping “same” items together. I’d rather have all the books in one place than divided up into a different area of the house depending on who they belong to.
The decor items on the shelves are a random mix of family photos and items that we’ve collected over the years.
The wicker baskets are new. The bigger baskets hold Ian’s record collection, while the small baskets are housing DVDs, video games, and remotes. And yes, that is a VHS player you spy on the TV cabinet shelf. We’re probably the only dinosaurs who still own one, but Ian swears we need it when he wants to randomly watch one of his VHS movies that he can’t find on Netflix or Amazon. ???
Coffee Table Decor
Our previous ottoman was in bad shape. The boys and kitties were pretty rough on it and it was really beyond repair. I replaced it with this little coffee table that I found on Overstock. I thought it kind of had a farmhouse feel and I love that it has a bottom shelf for additional storage.
The shape and size of this table fit so much better. The old ottoman was wide and square and took up much of the floor space.
I scored that decorative globe in the clearance section at Marshall’s for around two bucks. (Yippee!) The sea grass basket is holding magazines and those books are just some cool coffee table reads.
I kept the decor on the top of the coffee table pretty simple. I used a galvanized tray, white pitcher, candle, and some faux plants-a little boxwood and a cotton stem. Most of these items I already had and just put them together to make a pretty vignette.
I change my coffee table decor a lot depending on the season or holidays, so it’s nice to be able to use what I have around the house instead of buying new decor all the time.
I picked that candle up at HomeGoods and it smells DIVINE!!
Shop Your Home – Repurpose Furniture and Decor
The other furniture in the room was either stuff that I already had or repurposed from another room. My mom gave us this end table. It was still in good shape-so I kept it in the room.
I already had most of the decor that’s on the end table. The coasters were found at Marshall’s and the wood beads were in the fall seasonal items from Hobby Lobby.
The lamps and sisal rug were items that I repurposed from upstairs. The sisal rug is from Safavieh and I’ve had it for several years now. It’s seen better days, but it’s held up surprisingly well with pets and kids.
I knew that I wanted to layer it with another rug to add some color and texture to the room. In my previous post, you may have noticed that I showed you a different rug that I thought I was going to use.
Uhhh, no.
I had to switch out that rug and quick. It was 100% wool, which I thought I would like, but it shed worse than all of my pets combined!! There were layers of white fuzz everywhere!!!
After trying to live with it for a couple of weeks and praying that the shedding would cease, LOL, I ended up rolling it up and storing it in another room. I keep thinking that maybe I could use it in another area of the house but with all the shedding-I’m just not so sure…
I ended up ordering the small gray area rug from Overstock.
Add in New Decor Items
I got this pretty sign from Smallwood Home. I always see their gorgeous signs on Facebook and finally took advantage of one of their sales.
This sign makes me happy every time I look at it! It’s such a sweet statement and it’s totally appropriate for our family room where I hang out with the people I love the most.
The sign is crafted well, and it’s light and easy to hang. It came with hardware that we easily snapped onto the back of the frame.
The throw and pillows were a combination of new purchases and things I already owned. The two gray end pillows, the gray striped pillow, and the throw were all purchased at HomeGoods. For the cream-colored pillows, I already owned the pillow forms and ordered the pillow covers from Amazon a couple of years ago.
I love throw pillows and might have a slight obsession. I always feel that they are a great way to add color and texture + a little bit of cozy to any area. Don’t you just want to grab your favorite book, a cup of coffee and snuggle down on the sofa?!
The curtains were a find from Marshall’s. I actually didn’t buy them the first time that I found them. But they were one of those things that I couldn’t stop thinking about. (Is that silly???)
When I popped into Marshall’s a couple of weeks later and the curtains were still there-I knew I had to pull the trigger and GET THEM! I’m so glad that I did. I Think they fit in perfectly with the clean and simple look that I was going for.
How’s that saying go…”what’s for you, won’t pass by you.” I totally embraced that sentiment with these curtains!!
Mix in the Old with the New
The white crochet throw that you see poking out on the bottom left is my favorite. My aunt is amazing at crochet. She made that for us as a wedding gift. I use it and wash it all the time and it’s still in awesome shape.
It’s so cozy and has a good amount of weight to it. It’s wonderful to curl up under after a long day out from the house.
One more full room view…and a sneak peek at the other end of the room. Ian and I are installing a little coffee bar. It’s not quite done yet, but you can see it peeking out in the corner there.
Stay tuned for that, ya’ll! It’s turning out super cute and it’s going to be a great little addition to the family room. If you know anything about me, you know that I’ll think of any excuse to add coffee somewhere!
So that’s the end of our basement tour. Thanks so much for coming down to check it out! I was so happy to have you here today.
Before you go, be sure to check out the other posts about this room’s transformation.
–A Cozy & Casual Farmhouse Family Room – Design Board & Inspiration
–Updates on our Farmhouse Family Room Refresh
–How to Update an Old & Saggy Sofa
Resources
This post contains affiliate links. See my full disclosure here.
- Sofa and Chairs – bought from JCPenney’s several years ago, similar
- I Choose You Sign – Small Woods Home
- Curtains – Amazon
- Media Wicker Baskets – Target
- Ikea Bookshelves – No longer available, similar
- Coffee Table – Overstock
- Gray Rug – Overstock
- Sisal Rug – Amazon
- Lamps – Walmart, no longer available, similar
- Gray Throw Pillows – Amazon
- Cream Throw Pillows – Amazon
- Gray throw – Amazon
- Galvanized Tray – Marshall’s, similar
- White Pitcher – Amazon
- Little Faux Boxwood – Similar
- Cotton Stem – similar
- Wood Bead Garland – Amazon
- White Marble Coasters – Amazon
Don’t forget to subscribe below so you can stay updated on the coffee bar progress as well as the other DIY projects we have going on around here.
Do you have a family room? Tell me about it? I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a comment below and let me know what the decor style is in your family room.
Have an awesome week!
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