Our Mini Fixer Upper

It’s no secret amongst my family that I love the HGTV show Fixer Upper. I think Joanna Gaines’ design eye and flair is brilliant  and I wish she could come visit and organize a re-do of our entire house – for free, if possible. 😉  

But since she’s in Waco and we’re in Minnesota, and we currently don’t have the kind of budget she would need to fix up our house, Teacher Man and I did a little mini fixer upper of our own over spring break. We completely changed our family room from a drab, boring, cluttered space for Joe and his video games into a multi-functioning , bright, calming, and decidedly uncluttered space for all of us to use.

We painted the walls a lovely shade of gray; said good-bye to the brown leather furniture and bought a new lighter khaki sectional and matching club chair; removed the TV cabinet and mounted the TV to the wall above the fireplace; and built a new mantel. (We also have plans for new curtains with a pop of color but I haven’t found the right style yet.)

By “we”, I mean mostly Teacher man. He’s the painter in the family and he also built and painted the mantel, which I think is amazing and gives a whole new focal point to the room. I contributed the initial master plan behind doing all of this (“Honey, I’m so bored with this room!”) and I’m also really (really) good at shopping for new furniture and decorating the updated space. 

Joe’s video gaming systems? No worries – all are stored in the dark brown antique cabinet that you’ll see in some of the photos and he can easily pull them out and plug them into the TV if he so wishes. But – oh happy day for his mama! – all can be tucked away out of sight when he isn’t playing videos.

I am so enamored of this new space that all I want to do is sit on the comfy sectional sofa, sip a glass of wine, and watch marathons of Fixer Upper! 

Check out the before and after photos and let me know what you think. Do you enjoy fixing up rooms in your house when you can?

Lara

The “before” picture – sans the TV cabinet, which we had already given to my sister and brother-in-law to use in their new house, and the wall art/photos which we had already taken down. Incidentally, R2D2 found a new permanent home up in Joe’s bedroom.

And the “after” picture in all it’s glory. The gray color of the walls is a little hard to see, as it is slightly darker than this photo shows, but I think you can see this is a much more organized, uncluttered space. I’m still on the lookout for a square coffee table that will fit in front of the sectional, so Teacher Man and I plan to visit a few local antique stores this weekend to see if we find anything.

Here’s a close-up of the mantel Teacher Man built. The top actually fits right over the old mantel so it’s just hidden and didn’t need to come completely off.

Aside from the sectional and club chair, all the other furniture was in the room before – it’s just rearranged and reconfigured. I love how the new design features the wedding quilt my aunt from New York made for us. If you look closely you’ll see I’m represented by a turkey and Teacher Man is represented by a school and school bus. 🙂

And one more piece of art we absolutely love is the painting Teacher Man’s uncle made for us and gave to us as a wedding gift as well. Previously, this picture was above the fireplace but we love it just as much here about the antique brown cabinet.