Studio B Transformations Family Room & Deck

I never really did that much with the Family Room, the next big project would have been to replace the carpet.  But here are a few photos of the room just to give you a feel for the size of the room and the possibilities.

This is how the room looked when I saw it the first time.  Even the dark paneling could not cover the fact that it was a huge room with lots of light and an amazing view out over the golf course.

I took down those grandma curtains first and updated that light fixture.

We sanded, primed and painted those paneled walls.

The room has an intercom terminal and dedicated thermostat.  I loved the zone heating options on this house!  And of course it's wide open into the kitchen and we added tract lighting above the bar in between.

So after the paint dried I added some shelves and painted the walls behind them the blue from the kitchen to unify the rooms some.  But the dark fireplace was still too dark and overwhelming in the room.

So I carefully stained the brick and was very pleased with how it turned out. It brightened up the room a great deal, a good coat of masonry paint in white would work wonders in my opinion. And a simple mantle.  Oh it was wonderful to have a fire in there in the midst of snow storms!

I changed the window treatments to ones that showed off my ever changing collection of art glass.  The sun came through there in the evenings and just made my glass glow, I loved that!  And in the evening with guests we'd light the candles in the sconces and they looked so pretty.

And just outside the sliding glass doors is the roomy back deck.

I kept a bowl of bird seed for the guests who liked to drop by.  They were fun to watch!

I think this deck was one of my favorite features of this house.  I grew veggies and an herb garden here and made pizza and pretty much anything else on the grill.  There simply is no better place to be in the cool of a summer evening.

The listing.  Please feel free to pass this link to someone who might need a great home in the area. 
The price is low, the time is right to snatch up a great house at a great deal!

Happy Creating,
-Carmen Rose

Brick Fireplace Stain

For some time I have considered my fireplace in the family room. It is brick, which is lovely, but the color of the brick was too dark, though it matches all the other brick around the place. I wanted to try to stain it lighter, but when I started to research stains, I saw the price and laughed out loud. Mercy, they DO they take themselves seriously! I had a five gallon bucket of primer (that happened to be created for masonry) a while back, used in on lots of stuff (none of which was masonry) and had some left in the bottom of the bucket. So after an absolutely unproductive week I needed *something* to justify my existence and the fireplace became my victim.

 I thinned out the primer and tried a patch of brick on the side where it wouldn't show. Hmmm... not bad. 

So I tried some on the front...  

Weill... I think I've passed the point of no return!  

Hmmm...  (hubby gonna kill me!)

It took me a while to get the hang of getting it on the brick without wearing it or slopping it everywhere.

Ok, this is kind of fun.  A lot like actual work, but it's making a big difference.

It's growing on me, and I started to get the hang of evening out the thin areas.

I put it all back together and stepped back. Not too bad.  Certainly better than the dark brick, but I'm not sure I'm done with it.  I may try to even things out or purposefully uneven things out.

One of these days I'll give build a mantle, change the floor tile and that carpet has to go!  But this was a good project for another day home alone.  Hubby came home a little bit ago and noticed it immediately.  So that's good - it wasn't a subtle change.  He hates it, though of course it's too late.  But I like the change, it works in the room.  And I managed to actually accomplish something today, so that's good.

I just ran across this photo of the place before we moved in... that's the fireplace. 
It looks different now.

Here's to Spring, inside and out!

-Carmen Rose