50 Shades Of Beige

I’m going to be really honest here…I’ve been holding back on showing you guys my family room.  In my mind, it’s not where I want it to be.  But, this blog is about real life.  That means our real stuff has to show through in order for you to see us and know us as we are.  

So, our family room is what it is…50 Shades Of Beige!  We had our whole house painted in Diverse Beige by Sherwin Williams. We knew that someday down the road we would repaint.  I just didn’t want the task of painting an entire house right when we moved in.  Although I like this color for the other rooms, I soon realized that our family room was drowning in a sea of beige.

On to the creamy-beige furniture…sigh.  A bit of a confession here – our well-loved couches are 15 years old.  They are ready to move on to bigger and better things, like a nice home at the Goodwill.  BUT, that’s not happening anytime in the near future because we’ve got other things to purchase.  Those things rank above the furniture, so I’m going to keep making the couches work.  The one saving grace of our couches is that the cushion covers come off and I can throw them in the washing machine.  That has been a lifesaver because they’ve weathered milk stains, juice boxes, melted chocolate and, dare I say, an occasional red wine spill.

 

Eventually I would like to replace them with something in charcoal like this.

Now I’m going to give you a peek into another corner of the family room.  One I happened to leave out of the main picture. On purpose. Because it’s ugly.  This chair reminds me of Chairy from Pee Wee’s playhouse.

 

 

Let me say this…I have nothing against recliners!  We’ll probably get another one, only updated and a bit more on fleek, ha!  We’ve had a recliner for 9 years.  When we got one, I was breastfeeding a newborn and was up a lot in the night.  A recliner made it so easy to feed the baby and then drift off to sleep with both of us undisturbed.  It literally saved me when I was nursing my youngest and had two older kids to take care of during the day.  I needed every minute of extra sleep I could get.  That recliner slowly became one of our favorite chairs and it’s like my husband’s best friend.  However, (insert long pause), it does not fit into my design plans!  It has to go. Has. To. Go.

Some pieces that I DO like in this room are the ottoman and the console table.  We bought them at an auction after we moved in.

The wall that the media console is against is huge, so I needed something to fill in the spaces on either side of it.   I bought some birch logs on Etsy and placed them in a large planter.  That definitely helped to fill things in, but like everything else, it tends to blend in to the beige walls.

On the left side of the console, I have these wall-hangings, and this wall art is above the couch.  Both are from Target.

 

So what I am I going to do to remedy my beige overload?  I’m thinking that a quick fix would be to change out the shades on the lamps to add a bit more color along with some more pillows and throw blankets.  I’m also going to paint the walls, which would make the room 1 less shade of beige!

HGTV and Sherwin Williams have teamed up to create Color Visualizer.  You can upload a pic of your space and try out countless colors to see what you like.  Here’s my family room in Grizzle Gray.  I think I like it!  I did have a hard time working around the birch logs, but this program is perfect for giving me a visual to help me choose a paint color.

So, there it is.  My 50 Shades Of Beige family room in all of it’s glory.  Hopefully, a couple of tweaks will be just what I need to love this room.  Let me know if you have any suggestions for me.  I am always so excited to ready your comments, so keep them coming!