No-Cost Decorating

On New Year's Day we took down all of our Christmas decor and put it all away.  Over the holidays we started tossing around the idea of rearranging the furniture in our family room after the tree was put away.  It was also a good chance to really clean the room from top to bottom, since we were moving nearly every piece of furniture. 

Here's a look at our family room with all of the changes.  

Here is our family room as it was set up for the holidays.

Before we started moving any real furniture, we moved it all on a piece of graph paper with the floor plan drawn out with cut outs of all of the existing furniture we have in the room.  It's something I have for each of the rooms in my home.  Makes trying out different furniture arrangements much easier on our backs.  The before photo above is our family room right after the tree was put away which is why the far left hand corner is empty.  One of the issues with the old floor plan was that having the sofa in the middle of the room cut the room in half.  It also left only a small amount of space to actually enter the room.  The sofa also seemed to block any focus on the fireplace mantel.  

Here is another view of the room.  

I actually did like the game table on an angle in the before photo, however it was rarely used since it was hidden behind the sofa.  I'm hoping it will be used more now that it's more accessible.

It's funny...we have lived here more than thirteen years and we have used the sliding glass door in this room maybe once or twice.  I've decided that since the door is never used, I'm going to treat it more like a giant window that furniture can go in front of.  

The lamp is from my home office.  It's a Pottery Barn lamp and lamp shade.  It was next to my copy machine in my office and it tended to get in the way each time I needed to make a copy. 

 The lamp works really well with the decor in this room - maybe even better than it did in my office.

The room is very open with this furniture arrangement and it actually feels so much bigger now. You can still see the television perfectly from the sofa, even though it is no longer directly in front of the television.  In fact, you can now see the television from all of the seating in the room.  Plus, we actually get to use the ottomans that came with the chairs.  In the previous arrangement there was never any room for those and they had to be separated from their respective chairs.

 While I was at it, I created a simple vignette for my mantel.  The candles are my favorite and were one of my gifts from my husband for Christmas this year.
They are battery operated and look so real, even in person.

Here is a view of the room from the fireplace.  To the left of the sofa I brought up a table from the basement that works well for now.  I also completely changed up what is on the coffee table, adding flowers, books and potpourri to a wicket basket also from Pottery Barn.

By rearranging our furniture and using a couple of items from other rooms, I have given our family room a completely different look - all for FREE.  You gotta love no cost decorating!

I can't wait to hear what you think of my new, more open family room.

-Judy