Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Home Improvement: Basement

During my junior year of college, my roommate and I watched "Trading Spaces" on TLC every day. Do you remember that show, when Ty Pennington was a carpenter and not completely nuts? Well, the designers on that show just loved to paint vertical stripes on everything; I'm pretty sure my house wasn't on that show, but the basement looked like it had been hit hard by Doug Wilson circa 2001.

The dark paint, dark wood stain, stripes, and underground-ness made it feel like a cave. Here are the before shots with the previous owner's stuff (I believe this was supposed to be a "man cave.")


If you've seen the pictures of the rest of our house, you'll surmise that I'm not a huge fan of beige or neutral paint. But in this situation, it was truly needed to brighten up the cave.



A coat of primer and 2 coats of "Wild Honey" on the walls, and 3 coats of paint on the bookcases, we now have this:

Painting that bookcase was a giant pain, but I think the results were worth it. I also spray painted the frames over the desk black (they were varying shades of brown), made 2 pillow covers, and new curtains. Even though I have a love/hate relationship with Ikea, I made 2 trips there for the lamp, bedding, rug, shelves, and chair cushion (the previous cushion had an unfortunate run-in with the cat.)

We also sprung for a new TV (the shelf the TV is sitting on was free from the trash; I'm not above dumpster diving) so this could be a secondary family room. It's so cold in the basement I have to put on a sweater in the middle of the summer, which is perfect for the 100-degree days we've been having lately.

I still need to paint the hallway (it's currently green), but it doesn't look horrible and I've been enjoying the break from painting. So it'll get done... eventually.

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