Family Room renovation (part 1)

Here are some more "before" shots that I took during the home inspection so you can see where we removed a wall between the living room and family room. Above is the former living room which is to your immediate left after you walk into the front door. It had a nice large window but ugly old blue carpet. The doorway leads into the family room at the rear of the house.

Here is the view of the family room from the kitchen. The lady in red is our realtor, Dave at the table behind her, and the home inspector dude on the right. We liked that the family room was directly off the kitchen but it was small.

This is the doorway from the former living room to family room.

And voila, the wall is gone. This is the living room with six new recessed lights and shiny new hardwoods to match the exisitng hardwoods in the family room. Do you like our paint sampling on the wall? We had a hard time picking the right color. We wanted a nice gray but not too cold. We settled on "popular gray" and love it.

Our painter, Gus, hard at work with AJ inspecting. Let me tell you, it is not fun to have contractors working on your house with little kids around. Fortunately, we're done with the bulk of it now.

Facing the back of the house with painting done. We were finally able to take the plastic off our couches and have a place to sit. How about that TV and stand, eh? The next step of the process is building custom bookcases/cabinets and a mantle around the fireplace. We're planning to mount a TV over the fireplace.

View from the kitchen into the family room. We now have a 48 foot span from the kitchen corner to the far corner (near the big window) of the house. It makes the house feel so much bigger and open. We're really glad we did it (and by "we", we mean WE paid our contractors!). It was a load bearing wall so there is beam running across the room under the drywall along with new duct work. How do you like my window treatments? Can we say $2.88 for temporary shades from Home Depot? They even come with two handy dandy clips for raising them during the day. Brillaint! I titled this post "part 1" because I'll have to post more once we have the built-ins done and furniture purchased. For now, the kids love all the room to run and play.