hearth room

One of my favorite rooms in our future home is the hearth room off of the kitchen. Right now it is also very brown, but with a lot of paint & a few other touches, I think it has some great potential.

Current Room:

Room Inspiration:

via Houzz.com

I love the window treatments used in this room! We plan on doing something similar with the hearth room's two windows (you can see one of the windows above, the other is directly across the room). I also love how they painted the two bookshelves glossy white. We plan on painting the two bookshelves on either side of the fireplace the same color. For the wall color, I want to use the same warm white we will use in the kitchen to cover the paneling. We are still debating on what to do with the brick fireplace. We thought about painting it, but we may wait until everything else is painted to see what it needs. We do know that it needs a good cleaning, as you can see in the above picture.

Flooring:

Our room's flooring consists of small brown tiles that we are thinking about covering with tan, shag carpet like this: 

I'm usually not a huge fan of carpet, but this room is so small & cozy that I think it would work well.

Bar Area:

The kitchen counter extends over the cabinets, creating a bar area. I would love to use a few bar stools/chairs here for added seating. Plus, we are planning on removing the current cabinets over the bar area (you can see them here: kitchen inspiration) to unify the two rooms. Right now the hearth room seems even smaller because the cabinets block the kitchen's view of the room. 

Here is a bar stool idea using a fabric slipcover to add pattern & color:

We will have to wait until we actually move in to decide what furniture would work best in this space. It is a very small room (about 10.5 ft x 13.8 ft), so I don't want it to feel over crowded with furniture. We really want it to be a cozy space where you can pull a good book down from the bookshelf & cuddle up by the fire. I know it seems dark & dingy now, but I think it will turn out to be one of my favorite spots in our new place!

{alli}