English Cottage Living Room Renovation

I kind of picked the worst day of the week to film this video it looks like it's about to rain outside which kind of makes the lighting a little bit weird but at the same time it does kind of make it feel a little bit Cozier So the plan for today's video is I wanted to do a Q&A on this whole renovation for the family room this has been a long time coming this project started at the very beginning of January I think literally January 1st we are now in June it's been a long time I did not film the whole process so I decided to go on Instagram and just do a Q&A so I opened up a question box and I had you guys ask all the questions you had about the renovation so that's what we're going to get into I did film a little bit of the renovation so I will be just inserting some clips while I explain this but for the most part it will just be me explaining the whole process I'm just going to be reading some of the questions that I got here on Instagram they're obviously kind of all over the place so I'm going to try my best to keep them in some kind of order so this makes sense so with that being said question number one is did you have inspiration for this makeover or did you come up with a design on your own so this was 100% inspired by Katherine's home um her Instagram handle is life at the Muse I will have it linked right here she lives in Yorkshire England and her home is a few hundred years old but as far as the fireplace design that was 100% inspired by her home now as far as the sorry if you can hear my dog running around as far as the right side of the fireplace I did want to have logs stacked right here I like the look of logs beside a fireplace but they also serve a purpose obviously because they have a wood burning stove so we have the log stacked right there and then on the other side of that is this little closet I did have a couple questions about what's behind that little door so when we first moved here one of the first things we did was knock out all of the walls in the kitchen and there was a big hul closet there since then we've never had a hul closet and I have missed having a place to store shoes and coats and backpacks and all that stuff so I did have a little closet specifically for that my kids shoes are here in obviously it's summer now so they don't need their backpacks but their backpacks will hang here their coats so that is kind of what this little closet's for um and then obviously over here on the left side of the fireplace is this little Nook area which I will get into in just a minute next question is is that a real or faux beam this is definitely a real beam and there's kind of a cool back story to it so I got it in Park City but it was transported here from Ohio and it's a beam that was part of an old Amish farm back in the 1800s so it's very very old I do love the history behind it I think that's just really cool and it was I believe it's 20 ft long it was definitely one of the pricier things that I bought but it was really important for me to have a real Beam on top of the mantle when it came to picking out the beam I was there for a few hours because I wanted it to be like the most distressed old broken looking beam that I could find and this one worked perfectly so I was looking for one that would reach wall to wall if I remember right it's pretty thick I'm pretty sure when you're looking at it you can see it's about 10 in tall but like underneath it I believe was 14 in so it is a very thick and heavy beam and it was actually quite the story on how Thomas actually got it into the house he did it completely by himself with a couple dollies and then um we did not film him installing it because I'm sorry my dog is doing Zoomies right here I did not film the process of him installing it because it was probably the most dangerous way you could install a beam he did have um what what are those straps called they were he had it he had straps around it and it was hooked to the beam up above me and then he had car jacks but they're like really tall I'm not even sure how he did this Jacks and he was like jacking it up on both sides and then would use his own strength to like nudge it up over the top of the fireplace it was crazy anyway that was exciting to see the beam go in I was very excited once that happened cuz I could kind of really start to see it now I did I do remember getting a question of how do you kind of come up with the whole process of the design and for me I always start with I usually have at least like one idea so for this project it was the fire place I knew this is the exact fireplace that I want and I want the beam across the top and as far as what we were going to do on the top and the sides I kind of figured that out as we're going and so once this was done I thought okay now I think I want a few cabinets over here I want at least one shelf and I I want to do some Stone and some mortar but I do have to kind of see it start to unfold and see it come together before I can design more if that makes sense so I always start with one idea that I definitely want and then I kind of just go off of that next question is did you take the fireplace out or build it forward so this is a good question the first step actually was I wanted the whole like the opening of the fireplace to be bigger dang it I am not the best at starting fires and clearly they keep going out um but anyway I had Thomas actually remove some of the bricks as many bricks as we could but once I think we were only able to do two layers of brick um and then we hit I don't remember I don't know what it's called but that's as wide as we could make the opening so we made the opening as wide as we could and then and that was really because of the insert of the wood burning stove so I needed it obviously to be big enough to fit the stove um here is Ruby I don't know if I've introduced you guys to her so she's our newest little pup and she sees the kids playing outside so she's not very happy about that what are you doing yeah yeah Ruby Su all right so the first step was knocking out some of the bricks to make it a little bit more open and then he just kind of framed it out to make this flat because if you remember which I'll show you right here the fireplace was had two different levels to it so it kind of stuck out weird and it was also not centered with the room he just framed it out to make it centered with the room and then made it flat obviously made the opening bigger and then now going off of that he had something to um stick the stones to and then as far as above of the beam he just framed it out just to make it flush with the beam and that was I don't know that was kind of the idea with that and then kind of going off of that I did have a couple questions about the windows because there were there were two little triangle windows that were on the top portion of the family room and I had a lot of people asking if I will miss them I still have seven windows in this room so no I will not miss them and if I ever want them back they are still there they are just hidden behind sheetrock so yes this is permanent but I always do things in a way that if I changed my mind I could I could uncover the windows if I wanted to have those back but I do not miss them I actually feel like the room feels a lot more cozy in here without having any Windows on this front wall I still again have I have two giant windows it's basically this entire wall as a window and then this entire wall is a window there's a sliding door with two other windows and then two windows on top so again I have Windows for days in this room I don't need any more windows okay lots of questions about the stones lots of people asking is that real Stone what kind of stone is it is it faux and I know you guys are asking because in the past I have done a lot of projects with faux stone that actually look pretty real um but no this is all real the stone that's on the fireplace like all of the little stone is limestone and it was tumbled to give it more rounded edges and that was kind of what I was going for the look of that so if you're looking for this specific Stone again it was lime Stone I did go with a darker color and then um it was tumbled to make those edges a little bit more round now this header right here was actually a headstone I'm pretty sure that's what this was sold as uh but we did Chip it up a little bit on the sides so yeah the header was actually like made to be a headstone which is kind of funny and then the two if you're looking right here behind me these two large um Stones there's obviously two on this side as well those are landscaping stones and so they are just standing on top of each other and uh Thomas used brackets to secure them to the framing and then also obviously grouted like those are those are definitely sturdy they're not going anywhere and then as far as the The Hearth I don't know if I'm even saying that right is it Hearth is it Hearth I don't know but the the base of the fireplace I picked out two gigantic um Landscaping stones and I had Thomas break them into a few pieces and then puzzle them together to give them this look the next question was about cost this was definitely one of the most expensive Renovations I've ever done because you guys know on my channel I'm always trying to do things as inexpensive as possible a lot of the time I'm using faux material but when it came to this renovation I wanted everything to be real if you were to step into this living room I wanted you to feel like you were actually in an English cottage and so if everything was fake or the materials you could just tell were really cheap um you know it wouldn't give that same Vibe so I wanted everything to be real and so that is why it was a little pricey now when it when we're talking stones and beams they go off of weight and this stuff weighed a lot I would still say that this project was under $5,000 which again I know that's a lot um maybe for some of you you thought it was going to be a lot more than that but because this was 100% DIY there was no hiring out for help that would have added a lot more so this could have been a very very expensive project if we were hiring out for everything um or even just help getting it into the house because again each Stone weighed so much like these landscaping stones were a few hundred lb I don't really I have no idea how he was able to do this um but he just kind of muscled them up and installed them um um so you guys already know I had nothing to do with any of the project itself only the design and if whatever I can do I I helped a little bit with a grout in painting but other than that um Thomas did 100% of the work another question is where is your TV so because this fireplace now is so tall I believe the TV would have to be like 8 or 9 ft up above the mantle I mean that's like how high it would be and I don't want to be breaking my neck watching a movie so I actually have this rolling cart that I thrifted years ago I found this at the DI it's a thrift store in Utah and painted it it actually needs another paint job it looks really bad cuz it's been sitting on my porch for a long time but I decided to just have the TV on top of that um it's in it's installed on the backside so we just kind of roll it around if the kids want to watch a movie um I can just really move it wherever I want and it's very very convenient so I actually prefer how the whole living room looks right now and again I just kind of will the TV in and out depending on if we're watching a movie or if I want to just kind of slide it to the side and just have the family room looking like this that's where the TV is we still have the TV it's just it can kind of be wherever it wants to be another question was where is the coffee table from this was actually a dii project years ago I have a video so I will have that linked below and I believe this coffee table cost under $50 to build it looks really great I love again the old distress looking materials and and I love how this looks still also had questions about the Lilac so when I did my real that's probably how most of you saw this renovation um was through that real and at the time they were real lilocks because they were in bloom but you know those are only those only last like two weeks so people were asking for links I do not have links for the real lilocks but I do have some faux ones here sitting here right now and they are from Michaels and a floral I kind of mix two different ones together again to make it look more realistic if there's two different color tones going that makes the lilocks look better so I will have those linked for you guys below another question about the chairs these were from Wayfair I'm obsessed with them I think they're just really really cute and I pretty sure these are still on sale again I will have them linked below and they do have different colors this one is like the brown um it's like the tan with a brown I'm pretty sure it's brown I will make sure I have the right color linked but they have blue they have light blue yellow I believe there's tons of variety of these chairs so they're really really cute and then now let's talk about this Nook area I had a lot of questions on this so it's technically still not done but I was not going to wait cuz I knew if I just kept putting it off then this video would take forever to get out so I still need to pick a stain color for the countertop and I need to paint the knobs and I need to paint the base I don't even know what is that the baseboard I need to paint that as well so I still have a couple things I got to get to but what I wanted over here is it's actually the same Limestone there's a few pieces of stone underneath here and then it's just really overg grouted in fact this is mortar I'm pretty sure that's what we used was mortar and it's the same kind of idea as we did in the kitchen so if you watch that video I will have that video linked below where the whole backsplash of my kitchen is some stones with mortar covering the top of them so if you want to see an in detail I don't know like explanation or tutorial on how to get that look you can watch that video for the cabinets these are just the cheapest cabinets you can get at either Home Depot or lows and they are upper cabinets because of the depth of them now you could get the bottom cabinets but cut the back side off this actually just fit perfectly once I measured right here I thought okay three small cabinets would fit perfect right here and so that's just kind of how it worked out so that's why we picked three right there um so three upper cabinets and then built it up a little bit put the baseboard right there and that's how this whole cute little Nook area came to be I'm pretty sure I covered just about all of the questions there was a lot of the same questions I'm hoping I got to every single one of them so I hope that this explanation kind of helped if you are looking to do something similar to this now I did get a lot probably more than anything a lot of not questions but just people saying how excited they are to see this decorated for the fall and for Christmas and you guys already know no that's obviously what I'm the most excited for too in fact the next video I'm about to film this week is my patriotic decorate with me video and I have some ideas for this room so I'm just I'm really excited but I'm pretty sure that's it for this video thank you guys so much for watching I'm sorry that I have not been on YouTube much this year there's a lot going on we we'll we'll talk about this another time there's a lot going on in my life um and I'm pretty sure this is the fourth video that I've put out for the year which is not the best you guys we're sitting here in June and I used to do two videos a week so I'm sorry if any of you are a little upset about that um I'm trying my best to get the ball rolling and to get back to my regular schedule so hopefully I can get on there soon um but yeah I have a couple videos lined up to post I do have I think my I still need to be posting my my porch video but I am excited to start with um some decorate with me videos so stay tuned for some of those and thank you guys again for watching I'll see you next time [Music]