DIY & Crafts, Home & Garden, paint & stain, rec room

What a difference paint can make!

March 3, 2016 by Elaine No Comments

Yes I know, cliche but SO true! What a difference paint can make!

The basement of our house is multifunctional. Part of it is Chef Kev’s media room (or “man cave” as some may say… but not me, because that term kind of annoys me) and the other part is a one bedroom (currently vacant) income suite. And ALL of it was UGLY.

For reals. Industrial blue/grey carpet, painted brown trim and doors (nope, not wood but deliberately painted milk chocolate brown trim and doors). And yes, it was oil based. And the cherry on top? Well, not a cherry but rather mustard. Yes, mustard yellow walls to go with the blue carpet and milk chocolate trim and doors.

Yum.

It was all kinds of special. The top two floors of our house had been nicely updated by past owners but heading down the basement was like entering a different dimension. We are going to renovate the basement down the road and will update the carpet at that time so for now it stays. However, milk chocolate had to become white chocolate and mustard had to become grey. It was an order (by me).

But enough about that… you want before and afters right? I’ll share the space leading down to Chef Kev’s non-man-cave but save the suite paint for another post.

Oh, and due to the MONSTROSITY of this job (four coats on all the trim and doors anyone?), we hired it out. Thank goodness for Uncles who paint #unclechrisforthewin! #andhisfriendmike

Opening the door to head to the basement used to look like this (not too ugly yet but just you wait)…

(Note, evidence of six year old “decorating” for Hallowe’en). Yes, I’ve been eyeing this job since the Fall.
Anyway, Hallowe’en is long gone and now it looks like this…

Rounding that corner you are looking down the stairs. Before you would see the random wooden shelves (do those not look like they should be in a garage or tool shed?) left by a past owner…

Well, wooden bunk beds no more… Now she looks like this:

Ignore the missing baseboards. We have some ready to go, just waiting on a tool needed for the job. The past owner hacked up the baseboards to install the ill fitting bunk beds shelves. Thanks for that.
A quick turn around to look back up the stairs looked like this before:

(Again with the Hallowe’en decorations. On. each. stair). Adorable.
And now:

Not drastic but again, just wait…
After the shelves were removed, the bottom of the stairs used to look like this:

(See, the real ugly is starting).

But now it looks like this:

Turning around (ah, the shelves are back) You used to see this:

But now you see this:
A few steps further you used to be greeted by this…
but now…

That door leads to the hallway that connects our side with the suite side. And yes, we updated the hardware too! I’ll share details about that in a future post.
Okay, so now we are almost in Chef Kev’s room. I shared my vision plan here on how we were going to update this space and you may recall it involved both a light and dark charcoal paint. The charcoal looks great in person but is reading a bit green in the photos below (sorry about that). The lights (which we are also going to replace) are really yellow so with a lack of natural light made it hard to get an accurate photo of the exact shade.
Before it looked like this:

And now…

We still have a ton to do in here (details in this post) but it’s starting to take shape!

Before:

Oh, notice the brown venetian shades too? Evvverywherrrre down here…. But gone now… We have some white ones that are going to be installed this weekend.

The other side of the room before:

And now:

And one more thing to note, looking towards the hall before you will see we had three doors in about 6 square feet (the one you can’t see is the one I showed earlier which leads to the hall between our side and the suite). THREE. Weird.

So, now we have one (the one you can’t see from this angle but I promise it’s there). Because, ain’t nobody got time for three doors!

So, here we are! Still a lot to do but SO much fresher and brighter. And the carpet doesn’t even look half bad now since it’s paired with colours that MAKE SENSE!  Sorry, to yell, just passionate that milk chocolate and mustard never ever need to meet again.

Progress!

Stay in touch and follow along…

 

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