The Living Room Progress

There really wasn't a whole lot of work that needed to be done in the living room. For some reason, however, it took us six months to get it to a livable state! This is probably because we used the room as a dumping zone for all our other projects. We covered the hardwood floors with paper and over six months it was home to many of our messes, including our massive Monoprice orders (plural), sheets of subfloor and drywall, appliances (which sat there for two months waiting for our kitchen to be done) and much, much more. During this six months though, we did manage to wire up lights and re-drywall the ceiling.

Lighting and Ceiling

When we were planning out the lighting, Chris decided he wanted to have lighting around the perimeter of the room that was concealed in a recess. So we dropped the new ceiling 3/4" down from the original, creating a reveal just big enough to hide some LED strip lights. We also installed nine pot lights - four over the sitting area on their own switch and five around the outside of the sitting area on another switch. We needed to leave the original ceiling as intact as possible in order to drop the new ceiling and create the reveal, but we had no idea where we wanted to place the nine recessed pot lights. We ended up cutting strips in the original ceiling (between the strapping) which effectively opened the ceiling up, allowing us to see exactly where we could put lights so they didn't hit rafters or strapping. This also didn't ruin the existing vapor barrier and insulation above. My parents were a great help through the whole process, giving up their weekends to help us out. Their hard work is greatly appreciated and did not go unnoticed. Thank you Mom and Dad!

Fireplace

Both Chris and I grew up with fireplaces in our parents' houses and it's something we couldn't live without. We wanted propane, but the cost of the fireplace unit (in the style we wanted) plus the installation (flue and propane line) was just too high. We looked at electric fireplaces but couldn't find one that didn't look, well, electric. In the end we went with an ethanol fireplace which was significantly cheaper than comparable propane units and doesn't require venting. In order to install the fireplace flush with the wall, we had to build a header since the wall was load bearing. Multiple electrical runs and air ducting had to be rerouted because they, of course, went right through where we wanted the fireplace to go.

Media Wall

I mentioned in our mood board post that we wanted to have a wallpaper or wood feature wall where our TV and media station would sit. We ended up building a custom wood slat wall out of 1x2's stained a medium walnut that attached to the wall 3/4" apart.

Since our house is a split level, the wall the TV is on has a large header half way up that supports the next floor. Drilling through this would not be a good thing. Since visible cables running outside walls are wack, we framed up another wall just to conceal all the wires going to and from our media station. Chris will eventually be posting a full DIY on this wall and the wiring if you're interested in the nitty gritty details.