Our Family Room aka The Den

I thought I'd participate in a Show Us Your House linky party that Thrifty Decor Chic is hosting this week.  The featured room for this week is the Family Room.  We usually call this room "the den" but sometimes I will call it the family room and the children will have to ask "what room?"  Let me start off by saying that this room is a work in progress.  Actually, our whole house has been a work in progress since we bought the house last July.  I would like to make a few minor changes here and there but for now this is how it looks as of today...

This is the view from the kitchen doorway but the view from the hallway/foyer looks like this...

This room is a pretty big space but is a little awkward for furniture placement.  I place all the blame on those built in bookshelves. 

Plus, there is a doorway to the patio that makes it even more complicated.  This is our space where we watch tv, play games, and just hang out together.  It's seen a big change in the short time that we've lived here.  The day we moved in it looked like this...

Pretty, huh?  In January, we painted this room and covered up all this lovely wood paneling.  I couldn't look at it one more day.  Most of the rooms in this 1960's ranch has wood paneling and slowly but surely we have covered it all up with paint.  The real fun in this space was painting all those shelves but we "got 'er done" and now it looks much better.  I chose a deep peacock blue as an accent color to the back of the shelves and I really like how they turned out.  Makes all my junk stuff show up really great!  Do you have lots of junk stuff on bookshelves?  Or have you painted lots of wood paneling lately?