Friday Show and Tell ~ Repurposing Rooms

We decided a few weeks ago that our main living area was not working well for us. Since the day we moved in (8 years ago), the living room has seemed too large in some ways yet there wasn't much wall space. There is also no coat or linen closet in the whole house. Oh, how I miss having a closet to put coats and the vacuum cleaner away. However, I do like my 1931 house and they did not have coat closets back then.  Up to this point, our living room was our family room. Consequently, everyone saw the toy "mess" from the front door and the room was being used for play, TV, computer, scrapbooking and storage. Our dining room was being used for schooling, school book storage, projects and eating. The dining room was getting more and more crowded, and there was never enough bookshelves. I often had to wander all over the house to find a book on a bookcase that was crammed into a corner somewhere. 

My Mom's been urging me to repurpose the dining room into the sitting/TV room. She did something similar in her house -- changing her large living room into her art studio and making a small bedroom become a sitting room. It turned out so well for her that we finally decided to try it, too. So we turned the dining room into a much smaller and more cozy sitting room. I was able to fit my few inherited antique mahogany furniture into the space to give it a more formal look. My Mother gave me her old loveseat (which didn't fit into her "new" sitting room) and slipcovered it for me. It fits in perfectly. 

My antique secretary fits into the corner and holds all of my scrapbooking materials.  My dh is going to make a shelf to go over the steam radiator so that the loveseat does not touch it and the CD houses can fit on top.


I still have to get valances up over the windows. 


My Grandfather's antique chair was finally rescued from one of the bedrooms. It needs to be reupholstered some day in the future, when the kids won't ruin it, so it just has a towel over its seat for now.  Another thing about a 1931 house is that there are very few three prong outlets. The yellow electrical cord is going to the A/C unit in the other room. Ugh! We hopefully will be making some upgrades to our electricity next month.

We then repurposed the living room into the library/school/eating area. We figured we spend most of our time with our books, games, puzzles and eating, so it makes sense to give those activities the biggest room.

We bought some cheap bookcases for about $40 each to make a library wall. Now, all the family books are in one room! The kids do have bookcases in their rooms for all of their story time and personal books. On the bottom shelf of the first tall bookcase you can see a blue bucket.  That is the overflow project bucket for when it is dinner time and the table needs to be cleared of unfinished school projects. 


The view from our front door. You can see the computer beyond the dining table. The ultimate goal in a year or two is to go to all laptops and be hard wired into the big teen's computer (or something like that ~ I am not a computer techie person). The house already has WiFi. Anyway, I would gain that desk for more school space for the kids to spread out. The cabinet beyond the computer holds all of the kids' table time activities: crafts, playdough, puzzles, etc.


The front wall of the house holds a partially empty bookcase (previously unheard of in our house)!!! There is also a calendar area, reading corner and another big bookcase for all of the books we will be using this year for school. I love that all of our school books are in one place. 

Well, there is a tour of our new rooms. We hope that it works better for us. So far everyone is really pleased. 

Side note ~ All the Legos went upstairs to bedrooms, and the kids can only bring down a bowl of Legos at a time. Also, we are still using a corner of the kitchen as our toy closet. It works well for us. The children bring out what they want and then have to put it away when done. With their sitting room play space being smaller, it is easier for them to find all the small parts and get them put away. YIPPIE!

Blessings, Dawn