The Family Room Renovation

Now that much of my home renovation is completed I can finally start posting some completion posts.  For this post I will show you everything that was completed on the family room.  In some prior blog posts you will see where a small divider wall was torn down, french door added, and windows added.  For a refresher, here is what the family room originally looked like.

Below was after the windows were added.

The first step was to remove the original molding over the fireplace.  I then started pre-wiring the family room for audio and video.  Below you can see I had already started adding the ceiling speakers.  I have an A/V closet built into my pantry that holds my media server and tuner, so all cables had to run down through the crawl space and then back up into the kitchen.  

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures for much of the process of re-building the fireplace.  I started out by building a new frame for the fireplace because I wanted a more substantial looking focal point.  This structure was built out of wood and drywall.  The columns on either side also hold the electrical to get to the tv and all the audio and video cables. Like all the rest of the home, I also re-textured the walls and re-painted.  While I was as it I also added can lights throughout the family room sine there was only one bowl light in the center of the room before.  

I had crown molding left from the kitchen so my brother and I used it as the molding on the fireplace so it would match.  The floating shelves on either side of the fireplace are all solid wood that I stained to match all the other trim.  I then added quartz ledger stone to the fireplace surround.  The mantle is actually made from five different pieces of trim.  All of the trim is stained wood so I had to be very careful with the cuts since you cannot fill any gaps with caulking.  

Since my plan was to mount a 55" TV above the fireplace, I reinforced the wall so I could add a TV mount.  The decorative background behind the TV is stained furniture grade plywood squares.  The metal is actually aluminum roof flashing since this brushed aluminum matches the hardware in the house. Below is the finished fireplace wall and it turned out to be a huge change from what was in the home before.  Since I used extra trim, the cost of this fireplace was only about $250 and half of that was for the stone around the fireplace. 

The next step was to lay down the flooring.  The old family room had carpet but I really wanted to try hardwood.  I decided on a solid bamboo flooring that was hand scraped so if it gets scratched it just adds to the character.  I picked the almost 800 square feet of flooring up from Floor and Decor.  Below is all the flooring getting acclimatized before I laid it. 

While I was pulling up the old flooring I found the original vinyl flooring from when the home was built in 1978.  It is crazy to think all the flooring used to be brown and gold.

The flooring was completed over two days but it really only took about 6 hours to do the entry hallway, nook, and family room.  

Below was the final product with all the baseboard installed.  

Since I now had all the flooring completed, I could finally go buy a couch and a dining nook table.  I still have a few pictures to hang but my family room is finally pretty much done.  Below are a couple pictures of this area and the nook since that is now completed as well.  

It has been a long time coming but my house is turning out better than I thought it would; even though it has taken a long time.  I have a few other projects completed as well so I will be uploading those in a few days too. Thank you for checking out the progress!