We moved the big TV down to the “family room” again finally. It’s more finished than before, but still needs some work but is live-able now.
It’s been a fight to figure out what to do with this house. Really the main floor is so small & it’s use-ability is pretty much decided from there. For a small family it might work, but not for a medium size one like ours. 4 children & 2 adults in a less than 10×10 area for all meals? No way. So the “living” part of the main floor as it’s “supposed to be” has been less than work-able for us as the years have gone on.
We moved here in November of 1997 with one child, 1 1/2 years old. By one year time in the house we had two children. By two years after that we had three children. We had different furniture then, and got different things here and there, but all in all it was that every couch or couch-like thing we got just felt too big, but wasn’t big enough for us.
We ended up getting a 2×2 corner couch from Ikea finally. It was pretty much large enough for us, but even it’s smaller feeling type of big couch furniture didn’t feel right in that space. We had that couch in that room and moved it to the “basement” and back up and down I don’t know how many times really. But all in all it was nice for awhile, but it got raggedgy eventually and we never got another slipcover set for it, and the arms broke down and one seat fell through nearly, so I took one of the sections and threw it out so now we have a very long couch with one flattened arm and the other side isn’t an arm, but the old corner’s back. We’ve lived with it in this “living” space for a few months & it always felt just too much. Everything has been just too much since baby #4 has come to be, & is getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger … while everyone else is getting bigger too.
So now that monstrosity is in a better ready for us basement family room, ugly as it is, it’s OK for now. There is another thing, an Ikea chair to move down there, and an end table, then the “living” area will be re-organized as more of our “dining room” –which I did do some time in the past once, the area is a glorified entry/sitting room, not suitable as a true living room or family space for TV, games, etc.
Our kitchen is STILL in transition, and eventually MAYBE we’ll have a small eating area on the side of the kitchen opposite where the old eating area was. We had a small 4-person seating table when we moved in here and it fit fine there, adding a larger table was uncomfortable and it’s only ever felt right since that purchase to have it in front of the fireplace. The entry for our house leads right into that space directly. There is no wonderful entry hall of any sort. So having a larger family is just too much for this house. I’ve known it for years, hubby has known it too, but I feel it more, no doubt, since I’m here a ton more than he is.
We need to build shelves and such next to the fireplace. We have a wonderful space on both sides to use to make a very classic built-in flanking thing and I’ve had many stylistic ideas and my non-natural-handyman husband struggles to see how easy it is to build nearly anything we want with just some good old fashioned work with the tools we already have and the wood & MDF and such we can get at Home Depot just a few miles away.
One of these days we’ll have the money for me to say, “this is what we’ll do this weekend,” and just do it.