Build a Room

In three weeks from today we’ll be getting the keys to our new place!  Hooray!  There’s tons to do between now and then – finish packing, clean, patch up the nail holes, organize, and, of course, make up a plan for decorating the new place.

Some of the things I’m particularly interested in doing are hanging strips of wallpaper, tall curtains, painting walls, upholstering couches, building projects, refinishing things, and picking out some new furniture.  Anywhoo, I did an earlier post on wallpaper here, and I’m still entertaining that idea very strongly.  But a family cannot live on wallpaper alone!  So I’ve been looking into my inspiration folders and trying to put together a room that will be practical and functional.  This room will be open to the kitchen and will be the dining room, family room, office, and music room for us for the next several months.  It will be where we entertain, where Marty does work and I do homework, where we relax, where we’ll cook and do laundry, where we’ll eat, where I’ll do my craft projects, and where pretty much our entire life will happen.

So functionality wise, it has to be an incredibly productive room.  But one of the really fun things about this room is that, while we’re renting, we’re allowed to paint the walls and hang things, so I’m looking forward to being able to actually take on some pretty big projects (on my scale at least).  Here’s the plan that I’m working on at this point:



1.  This will be our work area.  Right by the window, with a pretty good view (although not a mountain view, but oh well).  We’ll put our desks face to face, which I’m pretty excited about – I do like that view too

2. This will be our relaxing/entertaining area.  The two boxes are our couches and the small rectangle is our ottoman.  Hopefully I’ll be reupholstering them soon, but we’ll see how that goes.

3. This will be our storage/media area.  Our TV, X-box, books, magazines, and games will go over here.  I was hoping to go with a row of shorter bookshelves, but I’m fairly sure we’ll need tall bookcases to ensure that we have enough storage.

4. This part I’m looking forward to most – our dining area!  And not just because I loooove to eat.  I’m hoping to build storage benches here to make a sort of removable banquette.  I’m also planning on painting our current dining set a weathered sort of dark greige, and I’m really excited to see that happen.  We’re going to need the extra storage; the apartment we’re in now is about 100 square feet smaller, but has waaaaay more storage.  The new apartment, while bigger, will be missing the closet space.

That’s all for now, I’ll be updating in the coming weeks with paint ideas, wallpaper choices, fabric samples, bookcases, and drape ideas.  Then, once we move in, I’ll be able to start posting about our projects.  I absolutely can’t wait!