Our basement: Bummer to Brilliant!

By Chelsea

Hi All! Over the last two years of documenting furniture transformations and home decorating projects on this blog, I have probably showed you our basement once or twice...maybe. It's just always been the 'leftovers' room. That space where unused decorating accents ended up. I'm all about an eclectic mix, but our basement was not the good kind. There was nothing tying any one thing to anything else. Somehow this space, where we spend most of our time together as a family, ended up the most neglected. And as a result it was bumming me out!

Here it is before we moved in:

And now - after just a bit of time and creativity!

My favorite little touch down here is most definitely the window frames. Seriously, my new gold metallic marker and I are really hitting it off together...I highly suggest purchasing one for yourself and seeing what happens next... Anyways, I wanted to maintain every ounce of light coming in through these small windows, (which we are really grateful to have considering it's a basement), so rather than dress the windows up in fabric, I drew in a herringbone pattern on their frames with my gold marker! 

It pays to be bold and try new things. You never know what you might discover!

(you are looking at my most geeked out photo yet. I did tone it down before publishing...)

There's the ottoman I showed you how to recover recently, (how to create your own pattern with a metallic marker is also on that tutorial)!

The clock above the TV and the dresser-turned-media center are both refinished pieces using the same green spray paint. The clock I took apart, sprayed the frame, colored in the numbers, (with guess who? Mr. Metallic Marker), put it back together, and hung it over the old stove pipe which is exposed in the before picture. For the media center I removed the drawers, took them outside, and applied this exact same technique, except with spray paint!

As I was working on this room a pretty simple thought occurred to me. For the basic kick-back and chill-out room, the number one rule is comfort first. Furniture absolutely must be comfortable and functional. After that, there are no rules!!! Play with colors and patterns that you might not use elsewhere in your home. Grab a bunch of pillows with bright and funky patterns; throw some on the couch and stack the rest on the floor! Pull in some humorous art that would look ridiculous in your dining room. Be a little bolder than you would anywhere else and have fun with it; It'll probably work! Be brave, little flower buds.

Thanks for stopping by!

~Chelsea