house to home | the family room, part 1

We really hoped we could find a house that had a room off the kitchen. I dreamed of having my children playing in sight as I cooked dinner. We quickly learned in our house search that older houses do not have rooms off the kitchen. (Much to our dismay, since we love older houses for the character.) We were so grateful this house had one.

This was the family room on the day we closed. The carpet is in really great shape, although we didn't LOVE the color, or the wall color. During the day it was okay, but at night it was really dark and dingy. After living in a place for the last 4 years with tan walls and tan carpet, we were sick of blah.

A fireplace! Definitely not on our must-have list, but a major bonus. It was a bit perplexing however as to why the previous owners had spent so much on updates but never bothered to add a mantle. And see these awesome cords? We weren't quite sure what the previous owners did with all of them. 

We didn't touch this room until after the holidays. It housed our appliances, tools, table, boxes, etc for the longest time. Hosting a NYE party was our motivation to get into decent shape.

I was the designer, while Brandon was the tech guy. I've never been a big fan of a TV over the mantle (for decorating purposes), but it made the most sense for the layout of the room. Plus, we are all about less clutter. So we went to work.

Brandon's idea was for a cordless TV system, i.e. a system where all the cords were hidden. Guess you can't really have total cordless. I didn't put up a fight.

First, he had to pull all the cords that were stuck in the wall out. He taped them to a broom so they wouldn't fall behind again. :) And yes, I made him smile for documenting purposes.

He removed the molding around the fireplace, and cut a new hole out of the sheetrock.

He taped all the cords together with electrical tape, cut out about an inch of sheetrock behind the baseboard and ran the cord along that.

Then he fished the cords back up to the wall and created a new outlet hole, which would be covered by a shelf in the corner.

He patched up the wall to create a smaller hole for the TV cords right where we wanted them.  

 See how pretty that hidden cord is? Can't see it? Good, that's what we were going for! He re-sheetrocked the wall where the previous hole had been.

Currently, we have the TV hung. We still need to cut a hole for the sound bar cords to hide those babies out of sight!  And we have the walls painted--still not a perfect color, but it will do for now. 

We put the trim back up around the fireplace, but it broke in the process. We had plans to repaint it for now and add the baseboard back.

But, the biggest surprise happened a few weeks ago, getting us one step closer than we thought we would be by this point. We'll save that for Part 2 since it should be done mid week. Can't wait!!