Cozy Basement Family Room Mood Board

Today is the official start of the One Room Challenge™ and I am so excited to be diving into another room renovation. I can’t wait to share my cozy basement family room mood board and design plans with you.

Do you have a room in your home that you go to often, but it’s just kind of…bleh.

For me, that’s our basement Family Room.

A few years back, we updated the flooring, but then all the other projects for this room got trumped one way or the other.

So when I heard the One Room Challenge™ was rolling around again, I knew this challenge was going to get my tuchus in gear to finally make over this room!

What is the One Room Challenge?

If you aren’t already familiar with this project, let me give you a quick overview. It’s a bi-annual decorating event hosted by Linda – founder and organizer of the One Room Challenge and official media sponsor Better Homes and Gardens.

Each home influencers and blogger can choose any room in their home to completely redesign in 8 weeks, while sharing the whole process on the One Room Challenge website. There are 20 featured designers, as well as hundreds of additional guest participants, like me!

You can see all the participants for the ORC right here. And I promise you will find tons of inspiration!

If you are new to Noting Grace, welcome! I am Jen, a professional vocalist turned home decor and DIY blogger. After many years performing on the stage, I took a step back when I became a Mom. Along the way I found myself needing to fuel that creativity inside me, while also trying to decorate our new home on a budget. My goal is to create rooms that welcome you in with a relaxed cozy style. It’s been a while since I participated in the One Room Challenge, and I can’t wait to update my dated 80s basement and add some character and our own style through my DIY projects. 

This is my 8th room I’ve transformed through the ORC and I am so excited about this makeover!

The Design Plan

(Some affiliate links are provided below. Full disclosure here.)

I know! I know!

If you’ve been to my website before, then you know I love to lean toward neutral colors.

Well, this is quite the departure from my typical design plan.

Deep grays, terracotta colors blending with dark metals and hints of woods and antique gold.

And I am loving all the mixture of colors.

It all started months ago when we ordered a sectional from La-Z-Boy.

Back in February, Trent and I were enjoying movie night with our boys in our basement. Or at least trying to. It suddenly became a quarrel when my 2 giant boys were struggling to get comfy on our tiny sofa.

You see, my oldest is 6’7″ and his younger brother isn’t too far behind.

We knew we needed a solution that would sustain my family of big guys.

So we made our first grown up sofa purchase ever!

Usually, I lean toward the economical options, but there are times when the budget quality doesn’t hold up. Which was the case with our old sofa.

It barely lasted 3 years.

We chose this gray and black fabric because, well…I still have boys. And they are messy.

Truth be told, I want my family to enjoy this room which means movie nights with snacks and popcorn.

Ordering from La-Z-Boy was a super simple process, but the production time was 8 months due to the pandemic.

I didn’t want to be worrying about a light colored sofa showing any stains.

So this was the best option.

Our sofa will be the same size, but in the opposite orientation with the loveseat and chaise reversed.

Since this room is adjacent to our Music Room, I wanted to incorporate an entertainment vibe with a few industrial feeling pieces like our ceiling fan and metal accent tables.

Let me show you our starting point.

The Before

Our basement family room has been the graveyard where our old mismatched furniture lands.

Definitely not the cozy feel I was hoping for.

And when my son moved away to college, he ended up taking a bunch of furniture, decor and rugs with him.

We sold those horrible sofas this past summer and moved this sofa from our upstairs living room down here until the new sectional arrives.

You can see my DIY Upcycled Piano from the glass door leading into our Music Room, so that helped make the choice to add terracotta colors as an accent.

Most of this room makeover will be decor related, like fresh paint for the walls, scraping and painting the ceiling and adding updated curtains, rugs and furniture.

The main DIY we need to tackle are the stairs.

The stairs are a main focal point for this room, and I really dislike the look.

Those dated balusters have got to go and that carpet has seen better days!

And, we have to change that newel post.

It’s a huge joke in our family because there is a knot at the tip of the post that looks like …. well …. imagine an image of a lady from a remote tribe in Africa from the pages of National Geographic.

<insert wide eyed blushing emoji here>

So this will be a baby step process to make over these stairs, but my hopes are to replace the balusters with metal ones and paint the hand rail black.

Sort of like this:

Won’t that be pretty?

And my entertainment center will be getting a fresh new look as well.

I hope to paint it and update the doors with some fun caning.

I’ve never worked with caning before, so fingers crossed it will be easy!

Another piece of furniture I plan to update is this padded ottoman.

We’ve had it for years and it’s had a few recreations over time, but I plan to give it a new look with some faux cognac leather I found!

Our accent wall is something else we need to address.

When we built our music room, we temporarily plugged up this wall where a pass through once lived.

And we needed some electricity on the opposite side, so we removed a sconce and light switch from this wall and ran the power to a plug on the other side.

So, yeah… We’ve been living with Swiss cheese walls for quite some time.

My goal is to create a lime wash wall with a veiling effect using one of my colors from my collection with Romabio Paints.

We also need to address this weird gas pipe that sticks out from our wall.

It’s about 3 inches long and is such an eye sore.

For safety purposes, we’ll have to get a gas installer to come and remove it and then patch the hole once it’s gone.

And that return air grate is definitely ugly! I would love to try to DIY a prettier solution for that.

Another thing we plan to change are our ceiling fixtures.

This is where I will give a slight nod to our musical past.

I found a super cool light fixture and ceiling fan that remind me of stage lights, so that will look nice with the music room nearby.

After that, we will tie everything together with some decor changes.

We’ll be adding a black out roller shade for this window in case we want to watch movies on an early afternoon.

Plus, I plan to find some pretty black out curtains to cover the two glass doors that are side by side.

Lots of easy DIYs and some big projects, but I hope this will all be doable in the next 8 weeks.

The biggest concern at this point is if my sectional will arrive in time!

I’m praying it does!

So be sure to follow along the next 8 weeks for more details of this makeover!

Be sure not to miss this season’s Featured Designers and the Guest Participants links at the One Room Challenge weblink up! As always, special thanks to the One Room Challenge media Sponsor, Better Homes and Garden and to Linda – owner and creator of the One Room Challenge.

Plans for Next Week

So this next week is the big demolition! Again, there’s not much to demo, and we will have to take these stairs on a little at a time, because we aren’t quite sure what we’re going to find underneath that carpet.

But, needless to say, here are my goals:

• Rip up the nasty carpet from the stairs
• Remove the fake beadboard and wood post from the accent wall
• Start scraping the ceiling

Home Pop || HANDy Products || Urban Ambiance || Affordable Blinds || Romabio Paints

Cozy Basement Family Room Mood Board

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