The Fireplace Room: How We Got Here!

Question: Why do we call it “The Fireplace Room”? (Why not just call it a “family room” or “living room”?)

Answer: our Big California House actually has four (4…yep, F-O-U-R) living rooms! Therefore it became necessary to specify THIS one. 😉 👇

Before and after of a living room with fireplace — **The 100% Essential “1st Step” Home Guide!**

Lest the amateur think all someone did was paint the walls and fireplace white, let us shatter that illusion. 🙂

First, this room failed in many layouts and uses until I did

THIS first, then
THIS second.

Sometimes we Architectural Designers think we can skip the elemental first steps but nope — everyone, INCLUDING US, needs to do those first two steps! Otherwise we’re all wasting our time in our home, so that’s why I created a printable guide you can follow yourself to save you days/months/years of your time and money!

Then and then only could we move on to the “visible” things listed below! 😘

What We Did After That:

We painted the fireplace, minimized the mantel, made our own ottoman coffee table, changed the floors, converted the fireplace to gas, moved the vent into the ceiling, and even made our own gorgeous faux-real tree for the corner!

You’ll also not want to miss what we do for living room area rugs! (Ours are layered…)

Fireplace in living room with painted white stone and minimally decorated fireplace mantel — **Ottoman Coffee Table: You’ll Be Surprised at the Material We Made It With!**

The Fireplace Room did also go through several design stages with different couches and lamps…although I always seemed to keep these two vintage pillows in here throughout the years…

Antique pillow in a cream chair in the corner of a family room — **Awkward, Narrow or Long Living Room Layout: 15 Clever Designs (With TV, Fireplace or Without)!**

Antique pillow on a corner of a couch with a lamp on the table next to it — **Awkward, Narrow or Long Living Room Layout: 15 Clever Designs (With TV, Fireplace or Without)!**

(It was even our dining room for awhile while we were playing with two solutions for awkward living room layout!)

I also custom-designed our own custom-made sectional couch specifically sized the way we wanted it for this room layout…

Cream colored custom sofa with neutral colored pillows in a living room — **The Expert Room Design & Layout Guide!**

…and used an antique marble + wood side table in the corner plus two re-upholstered armchairs that you’d never guess how old they are! 😉

View of a living room with fireplace with a painted white fireplace and a large neutral couch — **5 Genius Reasons You Need Kitchen Drawers Instead of Cabinets!**

Options for plants in your living room:

If you’re not into DIY, I share The Best Faux Olive Tree (Plus 3 Tricks to Style It Realistically!)
If you are into DIY, I show you exactly how to create the perfectly-sized zero-maintenance plant for your room HERE (“How to Make a Fake Tree in 3 Simple Steps!”)
Regardless of whether you have real or faux plants in your living room, you’ll need a pot or planter for it: see My Favorite Indoor Pots & Planters!

A faux tree is behind two cream chairs in a living room with fireplace — **How to Make a Fake Tree: 3 Faux-Real Simple Steps to a DIY Artificial Tree!**

There’s also a peek at our dark hardwood floors (The Only 25 Pros & Cons of Dark vs Light Hardwood Floors (The Ultimate List)!) that you’ll want to read about!

A full view of a fireplace in a living room with two neutral chairs and a neutral l-shaped sectional — **Living Room Area Rug Size: The (Only) 7 Rules You Need to Know!**

FIREPLACE LIVING ROOM

The Steps In Order!

Wondering in what order we worked to go from The Before…

Before and after of a fireplace living room — **3 Fast Fixes: Awkward Living Room Layout With Fireplace (Even Corner Ones)!**

…to The After?

What we did:

Created our #1 Step that every adult should do before spending another penny (or minute!) on their home! (Without this, you’re just going to end up redoing your work one day because it will never feel right.)
Worked on The Perfect Living Room Layout!
Floors replaced when we emergency–remodeled the kitchen and had to tear out the floors.
Painted the stone fireplace.
Minimized the mantel styling.
Turned it into an amazing gas fireplace with THE most realistic-looking logs I found!
Moved the vent into the ceiling when we did THIS in the bathroom on the other side of that wall.
Added layered area rugs!
DIY’d the ottoman coffee table with THIS material!
Designed the perfectly-proportioned sectional (this is NOT just width x length x depth…it’s SO much more than that and I’ll have to write a full post describing how you can do this easily, smartly and least expensively too!)
Made this faux tree!

White painted stone fireplace with a mirror and candle sticks — **5 Reasons We Ripped Out Our Wood-burning & Converted to a Gas Fireplace!**

FIREPLACE LIVING ROOM

Wanna see our other 4 living rooms? 😉

If you’re wondering why we treated this one the way we did, the four other living rooms in This Big California House are

One large living room right when you walk in our front door.
One large living room off our dining room which was expanded decades before we moved in (see our post on Awkward Living Room Layouts!)
One large sitting area (honestly, it’s huge!) off our master/primary bedroom (which also has a fireplace, but brick).
One large living room directly off the kitchen, with a stone fireplace: hence its name to differentiate it from the previous three: “The Fireplace Room!” 🙂

BONUS:

We could count a FIFTH living room in this house if you wanted to turn our bonus room into a media room, but we did something else with that big bonus room above our garage!)