Planning the Family Room Built Ins!

Ahhhhh. Built ins.  I’ve been looking forward to doing a project like this. It’s the perfect way to make your home look more customized and also increase the value. I’ve been dreaming of built ins in our living room since we moved in.  I knew it would be the perfect thing to add to the long, empty wall in the family room once the wall came down.

We haven’t quite done work like this before, but we have modified existing cabinets in our South Carolina home‘s kitchen.  See the fridge setup in this picture?

We built out and modified the setup so that it would be taller and more flush with the fridge.

So, with that experience under our belts, we feel pretty confident in being able to tackle our own built ins.

I mean, I just can’t stop staring at this picture.  How perfect will it be for our family room??

So the plan is for everything to the left of awkward HVAC bump out in the below picture to look something like the above picture.  SWOOON.  You guys, we MIGHT be breaking down and finally getting a TV.  We’re pretty happy with our basement setup now, but I want to prepare for our future needs with these built ins.  But again, we’re giving ourselves time to plan and execute this to ensure we’ll be happy with our decisions.  You can see all of the rest of our family room design inspiration in THIS POST.

The space to the right of the fireplace, I think we’re going to try and make it match the bump out somewhat so that we can turn them both into bench seating.  Something like this?

Minus those fancy windows and ceilings, of course.  Because that just ain’t happening in our house, unfortunately.  I would LOVE to try and figure out how to work in some built in dog bed into it though, haha!  I think Riley and Bailey would LOVE that.  Plus, it would keep the dog beds out of the middle of the floor like they are now.

So, this project is going to happen in 2 phases.  First phase is the cabinetry.  I’m currently pricing out and comparing some of the stock cabinets from Home Depot and Lowe’s, while also playing around with Ikea’s Kitchen Planner Tool (SO COOL!) to give me an idea of what it will look like, and what Ikea can offer.  They’re our top 3 sources for cabinets for this project, because we really don’t feel the need to go super custom with this. It’s not a kitchen and they’re not cabinets we’ll be using multiple times a day.  So here’s what I’m thinking we can manage with stock cabinets (thanks to Ikea’s planner tool):

Not too shabby of a simulation, eh?

So zooming in, I think we can fit 5 stock cabinets to the left of the bump out. I put some smaller cabinets to the right of the fireplace to give me an idea of how to balance it, but that’s definitely not the final decision.

But I’m so excited for the left side.  We’re going to get the cabinets for this portion first.  We’ll (I’ll) most likely be painting them to ensure that they match the rest of the molding color.  I have plenty of practice with that too!

So, once we get the cabinetry in, we can start planning and playing around with shelving layouts.  Forgive my 5th grade design skills, but I’m not quite fluent in Photoshop yet to do anything fancier.  We’re also going to play around with the placement of the cabinets to see if we want to bring them forward to be flush with the bump out or not.

The black box potentially being a TV, of course, and then the shelving around it full of pretty things.  But that is all definitely phase 2.

For now, I just want some storage for my magazines, books, decor stuff, and the spill over toys that bleed their way out of the playroom and all over this room!

And just for shits and giggles, I threw in some of the stock furniture they have to give you a feel for what it looks like with the furniture placement we had in mind.  The scale of the sectional and chairs in this are much smaller that what we actually have right now, but it gives you an idea.

😀