Family Room Makeover with Updated Fireplace and Hardwood Floors

On the first floor of our house after going through the foyer is a large family room/living area. We use it as our toy room because we can keep an eye on the kids from upstairs, and it’s a large enough area to hold all their toys.

The family room had laminate flooring that was cracked and splitting. I had also used it as my furniture painting area without drop sheets so there was a lot of spilled paint. We replaced the patio door because the seal on the glass was broken. I also painted everything including the walls and the trim. The fireplace is also a great feature of this room, but all it needed was an update.

And this is what the flooring and trim looked like. It doesn’t look too bad, but the laminate was bubbling in a lot of places and didn’t make a great first impression on entering the house.

Hardwood Flooring

So when I was 8.5 months pregnant with baby #4 we decided it was a good time to replace the flooring. We worked at it over about two weeks. We ripped up a section of the old laminate floor, and started laying the new oak hardwood floor in that same section. We moved all the toys back and forth out of the sections we were working on. And by “we” I mean mostly Tony. I usually love installing hardwood floor, but I think this time I was more harm than help.

Paint Trim

Then when all the flooring was finished and the trim installed again, I caulked and painted all the trim with a bit of help from this girlie.

Fireplace Makeover

For the fireplace update I took off the doors and then taped off all the brick. I used high heat black spray paint to refresh the front because there were a lot of scratches on it. Then I spray painted the doors and the vents above the mantle with silver high heat spray paint.

The light in here used to be a gold track light with only two bulbs. We replaced it with this Allen and Roth pendant from Lowes (affiliate link).  There are 8 bulbs and it is so bright!

I painted the fireplace wall using Benjamin Moore Newburyport Blue. The rest of the room I painted with Behr Ashen Tan, the same color that I used for the kitchen and living room.

If you like this, you might like some other makeovers we did in our third house, an outdated 1990s split-level.