Sitting Room Update

This post is for anyone who does NOT know what to do with their formal dining room! To be fair, I am normally team dining room, however for our family, who lives out of state from all of our relatives and has literally 0 need for a larger dining space except for one day a year (we plan to convert this space back with a table for that one day, and then resume it’s new set up), this works for us.

Once upon a time when we first moved in, this space served as a playroom, which was great! However, once our family expanded, it was clear that it was not working anymore, and the kids took over the living room. I think they technically won that battle, but the toys and the mess are signs of a good time, so we roll with it 🙂

This room started off just like the rest in this home, brown. Which if that’s your cup of tea, then you own it! We however were a little tired of it, so painted the top half of the walls with some leftover SW Thunderous to get us by. What I really didn’t love however was the intense wall moldings on the bottom half of the walls. One day we still may completely remove it and either add new molding or wallpaper, but for now we were willing to spend $45 on a gallon of paint to try to turn it all around.

We ended up each liking a different sample, but funny enough they were the same tone, just one shade lighter and darker than each other. Because of this, I asked the store to make a custom color halfway in-between the two, and that was the winner!

One thing that makes me not love the moldings so much is also the height of it. To hang art above it just seemed way too high and awkward looking, however the molding was so thick off of the wall that you couldn’t hang anything that dipped below it. To solve that problem, I added a huge wall to wall floating shelf, that only cost about $30 to make! Easy peasy and solved that problem. (for all of the details, check out the highlight on our Instagram page!)

For furniture, we added a modern rug, a dark green velvet chaise we scored at the West Elm outlet for $99, two chairs from Target, and we play around with the coffee table while we look for the perfect option. It goes between the two Target ottomans and this larger Pottery Barn coffee table from our last house depending where I move other furniture around the house 🙂

Now this room serves as a coffee to cocktails room if you will. The sunlight that pours in is amazing, and my husband and I sit in here as a little “get away” from the at times chaos that is the rest of our home with having small kids. I wouldn’t change any of that for the world, but do appreciate a calming space to have a cup of something to start or end the day 🙂 For now, this is what works for our family! As always, things are a work in progress, but I love how the uniform paint color makes the molding disappear a bit more, but still keeps an architectural feature that’s original to the house! At least for now 🙂