Here is another home sweet home blog post! This one is dedicated to my family room project that started 6 years ago. Yes, 6 years ago.. and it's finally being accomplished this year. This was how it looked back in 2009....

The furnishing's pictured above is the past owners; it is not ours. Everything else stayed pretty much the same; same carpet, same ugly wood paneling until last year 2014 when my husband took a few weeks off to rip out the carpet and the wood paneling and he painted the walls but then HE let it stay like that for a year. The husband starts something and then doesn't follow through or accomplish it until he pushes my buttons to force him to do something about it. Like my mother-in-law (his mom) says.. his heart is heavy when it comes to getting certain things done. I couldn't agree more, and I told her... I have to live with his heavy heart every single day. Nothing gets done until I force him to do so. MEN!

Anyway, since my husband was not going to accomplish this long and dreadful house project...I decided to, back in April, contact a contractor to get an estimated quote. Luckily they were able to give us one and so we decided to push forward with it.

But prior to all of the renovations this year, I made a few sketches and designed a layout of the family room of how I envisioned the family room to be. I made these sketches back in 2010, and I can't believe it's becoming a reality this year.

I even made a sketch of my work space area...

I even selected a picture for inspiration... this picture was screen shot from Young House Love blog, they are a young couple who does a lot of DIY house projects. I've been reading their blog since the day I moved into my house in 2009. I wanted something similar to theirs but not really either, I definitely wanted a book shelf in between the two desks only because I wanted to display decorations, books and storage bins.

I created this design using an app called polyvore. This was what I had envisioned...

Enjoy some of these "before" pictures.... (I know, hideous!) Like I said, my house is far from perfect!

This year, we finally followed through with a hired contractor to do the hard work. Such as: installing the white wood paneling, baseboards, they fixed two of the electrical outage, and they removed the stove and the bricks. My husband did the rest; he sanded the trims, primed and painted the wood trims (window trims and the door trims), and he took out the rest of the carpet on the stairs.

This is how it looks now with the carpet installed....

Just a little before and after pictures of the stairs leading down to the family room...

Now that the carpet is installed. It's time for me to do what I do best, decorate!! I bought a few decorations last year so I'm super excited to take them out and put them on display. Here's what I have so far with this corner...

Yep, this is our family room so far...thank you all for reading, I hope you all enjoyed these before and after pictures of my family room.

Please stay tune for a part 2!

Love, Choua