Along with every other space in our house, our family room is a room in progress but it’s come a long way since the day we moved in:
I’ve already blogged about several projects we tackled in our family room, including painting the bookcases and adding new knobs and trim, having stone veneer installed on our fireplace, lining the back of the bookcases with burlap and upholstery tacks, and switching out our old traditional rug for a new one from West Elm. After getting the basics of the room into place, it was time to start working on some of the smaller decorative details. First off – styling the bookcase shelves. After adding the burlap to the back of the bookcases, I half-hazardly threw a bunch of things up on the shelves with the intent of rearranging them in the next few weeks. This week (months after doing the burlap…) I finally got around to styling the shelves:
They are pretty tough cookies to style because they’re only 10″ deep, making it difficult to do a lot of the layering that you usually see in well-styled shelves but at least they’re an improvement.
I shopped my house for most of the things on my shelves, making only two purchases – a basket from Hobby Lobby and this tarnished brass goblet (at least I think it’s a goblet!) that I got along with my vintage trophy cup at the Tri-state Antique Market last weekend:
I grabbed several things from the tack trunk down in our basement with stuff from my days of horseback riding, including a set of stirrups to use as bookends,
a silver plate that was a championship award at a horseback riding competition years ago,
and even my old boot pull that I propped up beside my vintage bottles to add some height:
Another recent update to our family room is the addition of some new pillows to our sectional. It all started with this runner that I found at HomeGoods – I loved the colors in it and wanted to use it on my stairs but I needed two of them and never had any luck finding a second.
I was getting ready to return it to HomeGoods when my friend Vickie gave me the idea of using it for pillows. Perfect! The colors and pattern worked well in the space, it was a great way to add an interesting texture, and it was cheap – I was able to make three large pillow covers out of my $29 runner. Our HomeGoods almost always has a variety of these textured runners in various colors and patterns so next time you’re there, stop in the rug section and check them out! I have my “rug pillows” paired up with citrine and ivory moroccan pillows and grey velvet diamond pillows from Etsy shop Pillow Flight (affiliate link).
Finally, I added two Jill Rosewald / Surya poufs that I found on Joss & Main a few months back. Our family room ottoman serves as our game table and the poufs have been great for the kids to pull up and get their game on!
Isn’t it fun when you can finally see your room start to come together?
Ellora says
Your new family room looks fantastic! I am wanting to create some built-in shelves in our family room as well just like this for storage. I think you did a great job decorating the shelves with only 10″! Thanks for the inspiration.
Kris @ Driven by Décor says
Thanks Ellora – good luck with your project!
jvw home says
Kris,
This looks absolutely beautiful! I LUV all your ideas…
jvw home says
also….if you would’ve made that rug a runner….how do you attach it to the wood stairs? i’d love to know b/c i might copy that idea for a small set of stairs….
thanks!
Kris @ Driven by Décor says
I had called one of the biggest rug/carpet dealers in our area and they said that they would probably nail or staple the runner to the stairs. They wanted to see the thickness of the runner before totally committing on how it would be done but I never ended up having anyone out to look at it since I couldn’t find a second runner. It would be a great, inexpensive way to do a runner on a short set of stairs where you needed only the one!
Designing Domesticity says
Wow, love the puffs and rug pillows. I think it’s a better choice than using it as a runner. Looks like a very stylish family space. Great work. Thanks for sharing, liz
Kris @ Driven by Décor says
Thanks so much Liz! I think you’re right – I might have tired of a runner that busy after a while but it’s perfect in a smaller dose in the pillows!
classic • casual • home says
Excellent!!! I love everything you have done!
Kris @ Driven by Décor says
Thanks!!
Carla says
Looks great, its such a great transformation! Good choice to make the cushion covers! Does it feel good to have a room complete? I can’t wait to get one room done, my kitchen is early complete but will post the progress tomorrow!
Kris @ Driven by Décor says
I wish I knew whether it felt good to have a room complete – I don’t have a single complete room in my house! Still need drapes and a few more things for that darn family room but it’s close! Can’t wait to see more of your kitchen – now THAT is a project I would LOVE to be doing in my home!
SHERRY HART says
Great idea! Love the texture it added!
Anonymous says
My family room looks similar to yours and I love what you did with the fireplace. We had a stone face put on ours and I was thinking about putting builtin cabinets with shelves but wasn’t sure if we had enough depth. Can you tell me how deep the base cabinets are?
Kris @ Driven by Décor says
Sure – the base cabinets are 18″ deep which is plenty deep enough to hold our DVD player, cable box, etc.. The shelves are only 10″ deep but if I had been able to build them myself I would have definitely added a few inches to the shelves – there are many things I’d like to put on them that I can’t because they’re so shallow!
Shannon says
How did you update the brass fireplace to black? Did you paint over it or install a new one?