The Creative Room

Several months ago, I received this urgency to create a space for me. Space to paint, start going through boxes that are scattered throughout our basement from being a single, start organizing recipes, pictures, and hopefully photography; but the best part is I can leave the project behind, shut the door, and come back and work on it in increments.

As I surveyed the basement, I recognize that there is a lot of space that is available it is just UGLY! We have 70's green carpet throughout the main room, cement floors everywhere else, wood panelling makes up the majority of the walls, foundational solid... cosmetically needy.

I asked my husband if I could take the bottom room and make it my creative room. My personal budget was less then $500 to transform the room. He agreed to the idea, with some doubt of the finished projected, but humored me enough to go along with my idea.

Here are some pictures at the beginning stages:

At this point, I had primed the walls, and my husband marked out the strips for the eastern wall. I then went to the paint store and purchased "oops" paint, which is $3/gallon. I bought a green and brown, but then actually matched a pink accent.

Notice the ceiling tiles? We debated whether or not to cover, pull out, or leave alone because we were unsure whether or not we'd be dealing with asbestos in the tiles, being that our house was built in the 1940's. Our neighbor down the street has the same ceiling tiles and they just repainted it and it looked great~ so we spent $20 on ceiling paint, $30 on a new light fixture.

Last but not least, trim. I painted over the wood trim with the trim paint used on the rest of the house. We looked around at remnant carpet pieces for the floor, but found that it was cheaper to purchase a new piece at Lowe's and then we paid for someone to install it.

The corner desk I bought at a garage sale for $10.

Total cost of the makeover: $350

Here is the after pictures.

(See the green carpet, wood panel, and boxes that sit through the doorway... this is why I needed a room to start putting things away=).

Now we just have to nail down the rest of the trim and put up curtains... and let the creativeness flow!

My husband loves the way this room turned out, that he now wants his "own creative room". I guess there will be more pictures to come of our basement transformation. So Fun!