Our Downstairs Den/Living Room

Hey there and happy Friday! As you know, we renovated our house last fall/winter and moved back into our house in February. We have been slowly trying to make our house feel like "home" again and are finally in a place where it's almost done-- woohoo! 

When we first started the renovation process our goal was to expand our kitchen by moving the staircase. An unexpected bonus was that it not only opened up our kitchen, but it opened up the space downstairs as well. Now we are able to maximize every square inch of our space unlike before, when we had some "dead" space we were unable to use. 

 

If you watched the video tour of our house pre-renovation, you would remember that our staircase used to be right smack in the middle of our living area. We shifted the staircase to the side and it opened up the living area both on the main floor and in our downstairs den/living area. Devin and I are both so happy with how this room turned out, and this is where we spend about 80% of our time as a family. I will try to link most things at the end of the post in case you have a question. If I missed something, please let me know!

Come on in! 

So when you first walk down the stairs, this is the view. Our big dining table and fireplace area. We have our smaller dining area on the main floor right off our kitchen, but this is where we eat when we have guests over. My parents and younger sister come over for dinner at least once a week and then we like to have friends and their kids over for dinner occasionally too.

 

Here is a closer look at our fireplace area.

 

Our little table there is an empty whiskey barrel planter we got from either Lowe's or Home Depot and then filled with old wine corks. I saw the idea on Pinterest and liked the rustic look of it, so I copied it. I got the glass table top from Pier 1 and no we did not drink that much wine to fill up the barrel with corks (although let's be honest, after 8 years maybe we could have 😉). Our Whole Foods and Harris Teeter both have wine bars and I asked the bartenders for the extra corks "for a Pinterest project". They were happy to help and gave me giant paper grocery bags full of them. Good to know if you ever need corks for a project!

 

Here is our little bar area.  Inside this is where we keep wine bottles, wine glasses, other glasses, etc.

On top we have a couple trinkets from our travels. The two buddhas came from China and Bali. The little drum from St. Kitt's and the tiki man we got in Hawaii on our honeymoon. The speaker on the left is one of our Google Homes and is waterproof and wireless. We love that we can take it out back to play music and don't have to be worried if it gets splashed from the pool or water table. 

 

Devin has an assortment of liquors and a stein he got in Germany.

Here's a view of the same areas looking from the other direction.

And if we turn from the bottom of the stairs looking left, this is our view:

 

The big computer console is where we keep all of our office supplies. As we keep having babies, we keep losing another room that used to be our office. We finally decided to just keep everything in this old computer console (it was my family's growing up and they were getting ready to donate it so we took it!). We have our printer, paper, stamps, envelopes, important papers, etc. in here in the top portion. On the bottom we keep the kids art supplies so they can access it themselves.

 
Our gallery wall is made up of some of our favorite family pictures. Some from vacations, and some just from hanging out in the back yard. All frames are IKEA Ribba, just various sizes mix and matched.

And then another added bonus from moving the stairs was the storage underneath them-- woohoo! Prior to the renovation our stairs only had a little half door with limited storage underneath. Now we can store all the kids toys out of sight and pull them out when they want them.

We love how much more functional this space is now and are so happy with how the renovation turned out. Honestly we love it more than we even thought we would! Big kudos to our contractor for being able to imagine what we could not... and making it happen within our budget!

Here are the links for most of the items in the room:

 
Dining Chairs (IKEA, we have two with long covers and the rest short. The two long covers usually go on either end of the table but I see one got swapped out in the pictures, sorry I didn't catch it!)

Dining Table (made by a local furniture maker, but similar here)

JBL/Google Home Speaker (ours is older, and this is the new model)

Rug by fireplace

Chairs by fireplace (one from HomeGoods, the other from West Elm)

Sectional Couch (Wayfair) 

Rug under couch

Nesting Tables (West Elm, old and discontinued but similar here)

Console Table under TV (old and discontinued from IKEA, but similar here or another option here)

Baskets in TV Console Table (old and discontinued, but similar here or another option here)

Basket for blankets (bottom one Crate and Barrel, top from IKEA)

Frames for Gallery Wall (IKEA RIBBA, various sizes)

Play Mat under Train Table (Buy Buy Baby)

Train Table

Art Table (IKEA)

Cube Shelves for Toy Storage (IKEA, various sizes)

Baskets for Toy Storage (Amazon and Target)

Puppet Theater (Melissa and Doug) 

Today I am linking up with Andrea and Erika for Friday Favorites. Have a great weekend and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all you moms!!!!!!!!!!