remember that day in november when we were starting to work on our basement and we giddily unscrewed the countertop from that cabinet and were ready to demolish it only to discover that there was no floor underneath the cabinet and demolishing it would mean that we needed to figure out how to get a floor under there and that seemed like too big of a project to take on when you weren’t expecting it?
remember that day? yeah, me too. we gently put the countertop back. then we backed away slowly, went upstairs, made some lunch, and haven’t talked about it until this weekend.
after some deep deliberation, we’ve decided on the floor plan of the least sensical room in our home. we also have a game plan for what to do with the cabinet, the bookshelves, the floor, and the windows. but in the spirit of one thing at a time, we decided this weekend was just for painting.
we went with a color called winter lake (how appropriate for january in madison) on the walls, leaving the fireplace and window sills white.
just color on the walls alone makes it feel less like a sterile mental institution down here, which is a big step forward.
needless to say, there are still a lot of work to do, but it’s very satisfying to have forward momentum.
so what are all those outstanding projects? here’s my list:
- for the cabinet:
- paint it white.
- we may also get a board that will cover the entire front of the cabinets (and paint that white as well) and make it look like it’s the actual facade. that way, we can push the couch up against it and it doesn’t look strange but still not lose the storage behind it (we’d likely put seasonal and really rarely used items in there, so moving the couch wouldn’t happen often)
- remove that old countertop and install butcher block counter (we bought that today!)
- decide whether we should paint that door next to the fireplace blue (to match the walls), white (to match the fireplace) or leave it as is
- create a gallery wall of white frames above the cabinet to try to camouflage the fact that the window is off-center and that damn air conditioning unit
- replace all the window treatments with something white, flowy, and with some sort of pattern
- get a big area rug that warms up the place and covers up the linoleum flooring
- get a new coffee table that has storage inside to hide all the blankets (it’s chilly down here)
- get new sconces for over the fireplace
- build bookshelves on the other side of the fireplace (not pictured) and finally get rid of the black bookcases that are at least 15 years old, from ikea, and still standing strong
- hang awesome things up on the walls
the cabinet part of this project is hopefully going to in the next two weeks, so i’ll report back after that. in the meantime, i’d love whatever other ideas you have to make this room more cozy.
[…] Once we painted the walls: […]
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