Painting and accessorizing the “Hang-out room”

If you imagine the color of putrid flesh, you may be reminded of our spare bedrooms…

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Oh, how I wish my camera would accurately convey the tone of this room.  Simply close your eyes and imagine droves of zombies a la The Walking Dead.  And then you’ll witness the exact color in all it’s rotting glory.  Do you see it?? Isn’t it wretched???

To make matters worse, the doorway of our hangout room is all that you see as you walk down our main hallway.   It’s directly at the end.  The focal point, if you will.  And for three long months, I gritted my teeth every time I walked past.

Here is the space the last time I showed it to you.  We’d changed out the carpet and window and simply plopped down our stuff….

And now the room looks like this….

Improvement, no?

We still  have a ways to go.  I need to accessorize more to add warmth and softness, add a round mirror to the wall next to the window, new coffee table eventually, more couch pillows, floor pillows, etc.  But, at least it’s no longer reminiscent of the un-dead.

The soft grey color was actually an attempt to color-match the grey paint that runs throughout the main areas of the house.  It came out close… but not close enough to act as touch-up paint for the existing color, unfortunately.   So, I decided that rather than waste that gallon of paint, I’d simply use it in this room.  Since it’ll act as another common space (when it’s not a guest room), I thought that extending the main house color into this space would be a nice transition.

Here are a few messy progress shots (Aka: the time Lucas Michelangelo photobombed).  First of the painting…

Then, of the curtain hanging…

You may recognize these curtains as the flanking shower curtains from our last house.   The height, pattern, and color work PERFECTLY in this space.   I pretty much jumped around in excitement for the first few days after hanging them.   And the thing is… I simply used the same shower curtain rings from our previous bathroom to hang them.  Even though they’re stainless steel, thus, don’t match the oil-rubbed bronze rod, they look super cool and sleek.   I initially thought that I’d use them as a placeholder until I found something new, but they’re staying.   Because I love them.  And they’re awesome.  I guess you never know until you try.

Here’s another shot after I hung the painting…

This painting is another piece of art created by my mother-in-law Mac.  It was displayed in the master bedroom of our last house. To create this piece, she glued foam letters onto the canvas, painted it green, then went crazy splatter painting it in other various tones of green.   So super cool.

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We still have this blank wall, which is where we’re putting the TV.   I’ll have another post for that.

Let’s zoom in, though, to that lovely intercom.  It initially looked like this…

It was yellowed, dirty, and tacky gold.   I mean, I love gold but let’s face it… there’s good gold and then there’s tacky gold.  And this was pretty darn fugly.   I solved the problem by cleaning it off and then applying a few thin coats of wall paint…

Now, it blends in and is much less offensive.   And one more glamour shot for the road….

I love how my painstakingly refinished mid-century table looks in this room.   It adds serious character and richness.  Worth every frustrating moment if you ask me.   I simply swapped out the lamp from Lucas’s room and it fits perfectly in the space.  It adds some curvy contrast to all the straight lines going on.

I have to say that I’m really happy with the direction that this room is headed.   I have a few fun projects in store for the space, and once we get my mid-century media stand situated, I’ll have another update for the TV portion of this space.

So, stay tuned… 🙂

TDC Before and After

Lucas’s room = Painted

Wow, guys.   Just holy wow.  I have so many (fun) projects going on right now that I’m not sure what to give you first.   That’s what’s so crazy about these first months after a move.   Everything’s a little schizophrenic.  I want everything to be done all at once, so it’s an explosion of projects started in all corners of the house.   No rhyme or reason.  And what’s funny is, yes… I painted Lucas’s room this weekend.  But, no.  It totally wasn’t the plan.  It was a whim decision.  As in, I went for a jog, got back, saw Joey working in the yard (with Lucas “assisting”).  And said, “Hey!  I think I’ll paint Lucas’s room (rightnow)! “. I. Am. SUCH. A. Weirdo.  Several hours later it was done.   But not without a lone, sad pride casualty.  I give you my Facebook status from that day….

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Oh, Lucas. (sigh!)

Anyways, the paint-fest actually came as a side-effect of Lucas’s new bed.   Ya see, my uncle gave us this great cargo bed that used to be my cousin Bryan’s.  Here’s the foot-board…

You intrigued?  😉

I’ll have a separate post about the bed later, but the short of it was that after I refinished it darker, we started to move the bed into Lucas’s room.  And then I changed my mind.   I decided that I didn’t want to move the bed into the room before painting the walls and risk splatter drops violating the nice, new finish.  Thus, the room needed to be painted sometime soon so we could get the bed out of the garage.   At the time, I didn’t realize that “sometime soon” would be that very day, but it totally worked out.  So, we’re good.

When it came to wall color, I’d initially thought that I wanted to paint the walls a punchy green.  But, after throwing some green paint swatches on the wall to get a general idea, I wasn’t sold.   It clashed with some of accessories that I wanted to use in the space.  Then, I remembered that I had almost a full gallon of the gorgeous grey paint from the master bedroom leftover, so I threw that up there too…

And I loved it.   It took on much more of a khaki color in this space due to the difference in lighting.  It was perfect and would be a great backdrop for all of the bright colors I’m planning to bring into the space.    So, I did it.   And here’s where we are now….

Now, keep in mind that I haven’t even BEGUN to style the joint.   This is literally just move-furniture-back-post-painting mode.  I did, however, rearrange the furniture in the space which completely opened it up (aaaaand I’m now realizing that this means nothing to you since I neglected to take a before picture).  Just take my word for it.   Moving furniture around (FOR FREE) is one of the most crazy, game-changing moves to make a space feel so much more welcoming.    This is the layout that this room always wanted. There’s plenty of floorspace for Lucas to play and yet, it doesn’t feel cramped in the slightest. I just can’t wait to get his new bed in here (we realized that we need to purchase a few more bolts to fully assemble it first). But, this is a really great start for his room.

And here’s the ninja-turtle-donning man of the hour pulling off yet another Chandler-Bing-Smile (the towels on his shoulder are his “back-up nunchucks”)…

So, still up…. curtains (once the windows are replaced next week), a little special treatment for the built in desk area (not shown), new chairs for his little white table, wall art, styling. Lots to do, but we’re on our way!! 🙂

TDC Before and After