Family Room upgrades

A.R. and I have slowly been getting the itch to paint and finalize the rooms in our home ever since we painted M's nursery over a year ago.  That's probably a good thing since all white walls is getting rather boring and we have lived in our home now for almost 2 3/4 years (yes, I just actually counted that out...).  I'm sure our neighbor wouldn't mind us putting up the remaining curtains in the back windows of our home if I just actually took the time to sew them!  A.R. still gives me a hard time for not making the curtains for the solarium and formal living room considering I've had the fabric since before I was pregnant with M (I'll let you do the math on that one!).  I tell him I'm in no rush because we haven't painted yet and he has yet to buy the curtain rods.  Hello?! Can't hang pretty curtains up without those.

After view of our FR in the evening

Before view

Since he is not a fan of my artistic skills with the paint brush- he saw those skills when we painted my condo- I'm not allowed to touch a roller in our current home, so the most I can do is tape and clean up.  Let me tell you that putting up painters tape with a toddler following behind you and peeling off said painters tape you just applied is a real treat.  She even had painters tape stuck to her Baby Legs yesterday as we try to get our kitchen painted before our great vacation (more to come on both of those)!  We finally painted the focal wall in our family room when Uncle Sam was rather kind to us and A.R. found a good sale on a new flat panel television we've been eyeing to hang above our fireplace.  Yup, that was back in March and we are just now finishing up the room.  Disclaimer: it still isn't done if you count finding a mantel, valances, and hanging pictures after painting the other 3 walls (we have a light tan color picked out already, but it will involve painting up a staircase and the entire upstairs hallway at the same time). :P


After- I have a family photo to hang in the spot above these shelves



Before

Anyhoo, the focal wall is painted, the flat panel is mounted above the fireplace, and we have fabulous new shelving courtesy of my local IKEA.  The shelving is all custom from IKEA's Besta line.  The best part is that we were able to childproof the DVR and satellite boxes behind glass doors so we can turn the television off/on, change stations, and use the Wii without little sticky toddler fingers pushing random buttons.  Of course she has figured out how to sneak her little arm behind the door even with the childproof latch and turn the surround sound off and on, but the novelty of that is quickly wearing off for her when she realizes it makes Barney go away.  The paint color is Macchiato from The Home Depot's Behr Premium Ultra line.  The paint is pricey and is supposed to include primer, but we still had to do two coats of it to cover all of the original white paint.  Here's hoping that it doesn't take another month to finish the room up and hang the last of the pictures!  The link is the picture collage we will be hanging above M's toy box which is to the right in the first picture.