Our basement, you may remember, was having real difficulties with crud falling through from the ceiling, so this summer, we finally tried painting the beams in the hopes of encapsulating and reducing the crud. So far, I think it’s working?
I waffled a lot about paint color — thought about white, thought about black, ended up on grey, which I think is okay, but I keep wanting some more light up there, so maybe a lot of fairy lights will end up there. For now, it’s painted in Benjamin Moore’s “Whale Gray”.
We’re also going to start having the cleaners clean down there when they come every two weeks, which we never have before, so hopefully that’ll help keep it a clean and usable working space — it was getting very frustrating having dusty stuff collecting on fabrics and kitchen utensils, requiring a lot of rewashing of stuff.
This is the main craft & TV area — the basement covers the whole footprint of the house, so we have quite a bit of space down there, though the ceilings aren’t high enough for legal living space. Since I’m 5’0 and Kevin is 5’7″, it’s quite manageable for us. The room to the left is the gym area, which currently has a bunch of extra stuff shoved in there because of re-org, but I’ll be cleaning that out next week. The gym area isn’t particular attractive generally, though, so I thought I might hang a curtain in that opening.
Luckily, I had just enough of the Robert Allen Folkworld fabric left (we used it to upholster the back of the kids’ eating area next to the kitchen, detail in third photo) to make a curtain — it’s a little short, as you can see, but I’ve ordered a bit of old gold trim that I’m planning to sew to the bottom when it arrives, and then it should be perfect.
Unfortunately, that fabric is very out of stock — I can’t even find it on Fabric Guru anymore, which is where I got it originally, but I’m honestly kind of tempted to try to design something similar at Spoonflower — I love this kind of aesthetic SO MUCH. Maybe a winter project.
And I was pleased to find this round rug (detail in last photo) at Rifle Paper Co., in not quite the same but a very much coordinating pattern. It also comes in rectangles, though they’re sold out in the larger sizes, which is a shame — I might have splashed out for a big one if they’d had it, alas. I really like their rugs — they’re quite flat and relatively inexpensive for rugs (power-loomed, so machine made, rather than hand-hooked), so nice for adding great design to a space. They also have some hand-hooked rugs. Link in comments.
The concrete floor obviously still needs to be mopped and possibly get another coat of paint (that’s Benjamin Moore “Moss”), but that’ll be the last thing I do, so it’ll be a little while yet.
