A tale of 2 walls

Now that the basement is well under way, we decided to start paying some attention to my soon-to-be home office/art studio. The biggest decision on my plate was what color to paint it, rrrrrrrr, what col-ors to paint it. I can't have a studio where I need to be creative, painted in just one color... oh no! I needed a game plan.

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Not much to look at now but what these walls didn't know was that I had big plans for them.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone that knows me knows that I like a nice Chevron. A zig zag, a herringbone, a squiggly-do. So I decided I'd do just that. The idea was born and I was going to paint a chevron pattern up wall B. Not just any chevron but a multicolored, multi zagging chevron.

I checked the local big box stores and paint stores for different thicknesses of painters tape. I might be crazy to try to do this wall but I wasn't crazy enough to try to paint straight lines by hand! Well no one seemed to have what I wanted so crazy me I started to research online and found a "tape candy store" and ordered pretty much every thickness from an 1/8" to 3/4" in varying tackinesses, tackinesses? Ok, its a word...

Now I have the tape so now what? I did what I always do, I mocked up an idea on my Mac. 

I came up with the design and started playing with the colors. Once I figured that out, then it was time to actually find the paint colors. 

In between all this chevron planning I decided to paint other walls of my office a soft pale teal aqua color and from there I decided wall A would be a glossy chocolate brown (we'll get back to that wall in a second) so I figured I would start the base of wall B also in the chocolate brown and then just pick colors I liked individually. These were the winners.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You have painted in the past and no matter what you do your paint always bleeds off and goes underneath the painters tape. Well I have a tip for you that may blow your mind and you will never have bleed-thru again!

Ok, after that coat dries, now its time for the fun part... Painting in the lines.

Then I took left over dark teal and painted the angled wall next to the Chevron. This wall will be part of a bigger project down the road. 

Tada! Done with wall B. Now back to wall A!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, wall A, remember how I told you above I painted it a glossy dark brown? It was all because I found a 1960's electric wall-mounted fireplace at a resale shop and it was a bronzy brown color and I wanted it to kind of blend into the wall. I painted the wall and hung it up but it was missing something and I needed an excuse to use more of my painters tape.

I decided it might be cool to do a retro brick pattern on the wall in the same brown paint only in a matte finish so when the light hits the wall, you can see the contrast. 

Using 1/2" tape this time I started to make 4x9 vertical bricks on the wall.

tada! Wall A is done too!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Then I painted the ceiling white leaving the beams exposed to add more height to the studio and then my husband and I sanded and painted the rusty I-Beam and pole a clean crisp white.

Next up was the 2ft span of wall behind my office door. It was wasted space until I came across a unique and inexpensive bookcase online that fit right in. From there we mounted some additional floating shelves and I added some retro looking cork board squares. Still need to add some trim and fix the baseboards but then this side will be ready to decorate!

Now back to wall A

Time flies when you aren't blogging

Has it really almost been a year since I last updated this thing?! Yikes! 

I owe you all an apology and about a million reno updates! 

So, without further adieu... here we go!

We should know better by now...

In a word, how would I describe this renovation?

Jinxed.

As in, whenever we say we are almost done or something won't be much longer... then we aren't done, something takes a lot longer or new problems pop up. And all the above have happened! But we are getting there. Since my last post, all the drywall was hung, mudded and taped, we primed all the walls and painted the ceiling, and the biggest step, flooring was just installed in the basement. The flooring sample we picked was a solid chocolate brown vinyl wood plank floor to pick up the same color as the handrail and wood caps... what we got was more of a barn wood/rustic look <perfect for mid-century modern homeowners :/ >... not what we thought we were getting. Kinda stuck with it since its literally stuck and glued down. Hoping it grows on us or we invest in many hall runners :/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Flooring Companies,
Please make your samples a better representation of the overall variation of a floor and not the best case scenario.

Sincerely,
Bummed OCD-Decorating Homeowner

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyways, I digress!
Now I just need to figure out what color I am painting everything down here and we can get on that and put in some baseboards!

Drywall going up and new doors installed!

walls primed...

<record screech> what is that?!!

a leak formed from a pipe above the new lighting.

Of course it did.

New floors going in!

 office space

ceiling leak fixed, phew!

So getting antsy to decorate, ordered a rug and it just came in!

up-close and personal with rug

this calls for some fireplace relaxing...

I think there's something down there... THERE'S SOMETHING DOWN THERE!

I can finally say that aside from some touchup painting and a few other odds and ends, we are finally done with Phase 1: The Main Floor - Living room and Stairs extravaganza. Woohoo! Now we are onto Phase 2: The Basement. Dun Dun Dunnnnn!

Kevin has worked tirelessly to frame up and hang drywall to make a laundry room, my home office, a hallway, and a storage space. We've also had an electrician come in and wire all new can lighting in the hallway and add outlets. As I type this we have a professional drywaller here to hang our hallway ceiling and mudd and tape everything. There is one thing about all this we wanted done spot on and that was the mudding and taping so we knew this part would be money well spent for us not to attempt this ourselves! He will be here through the weekend and a little bit on Monday and then that part should be complete too!

So for your viewing enjoyment, here are some shots of progress. (I'll put further updates up next week!!) :D

Kevin built out a niche area specifically for a piece of art created by Jennifer Espenscheid (of Soma Gallery) and Jeremy Shamrowicz (of Flux Design) we purchased. Been waiting like 3yrs to finally have a place to hang this puppy!! So excited!!

looking for the perfect MCM piece of furniture to go in this spot :D

doesn't look like much here but this is my future home office

our hallway

standing in the hallway looking at the back corner of my office and the storage room

hallway

a laundry room in the making

my office again with a beautiful view of our well pump

my office door at base of the stairs

well pump area in office now drywalled off on a cool angle

my office looking into laundry room

these are the doors for the office, laundry and our workout room/bar in the back 40... (but slow down kids, the back 40 will be for awhole'nother show. focus. one thing at a time)