Crafty Genius: Our "New" Family Room

We took Scott to college this fall, intending to redecorate and repurpose his room while he is gone. We spent 2 weeks in early September cleaning, moving out furniture (Hailey was the recipient of his bed--now she has bunks again), repainting and sewing. We had originally intended to make the room into our exercise room, and move the treadmill and recumbent bike in there, as well as a TV to watch while we worked out. That idea died a sudden, and painful, death when Tad tried to move the treadmill and it wouldn't fit through the doorway. It really threw us for a loop, because we had had the idea for nearly a whole year. Our next, and more successful, idea was to bring the futon up from the basement family room, and create a guest room/den in there instead. I sewed curtains, a footstool cover and a drum kit cover out of 1" black and white gingham fabric, and we bought pillows and pillow covers for the futon, since it was too deep to really be comfortable to sit on for long periods of time. It is also the ideal room to hang the "Home--a Refuge from the Storm" quote which I made in Relief Society a year ago, but never knew where to put.

This room now works on so many levels, not the least of which is when the kids come home, there will still be a place for them to sleep, but it also gets the TV/DVD/Game System/Entertainment Center out of the Living Room, and we can use it as a family room without freezing to death in the winter. (It gets really cold downstairs with no heat source in the family room.) We have been extremely pleased with the way it came together. The treadmill is still in the dining room, but we have plans to move it downstairs, if we can get some additional heavy-lifting help.