A Transformation

This is the basement "bonus room" back in early 2014, just after we bought our house.  Along with the tiny bathroom next door, it made a perfect bedroom for Paul.  He set it up so one end was the gaming zone and the other was the bedroom, and we painted two of the four walls green, which was still Paul's favorite color at the time. 

When he moved out in early September I decided to claim the space for me and Ben.  I had visions of an area where several people could watch TV on a big screen, where there would be a nice rug to stretch out on when the mood to exercise hit, and where a bed would be all ready to hold Paul or guests or even me or Ben if the need arose.   Our upstairs guest/TV/office room only held two people comfortably, it always took a while to set the pull out sofa bed up, and we had no floor space open anywhere in the house for stretching or doing pilates or yoga poses.   

Having established the goals for the redesign of the bonus room space, the first decision was what color to repaint it.  After trying several samples on the walls I began to realize that I was a bit reluctant to paint over Paul's green.  Somehow losing that green was symbolic of losing my little boy.  Once I worked through that little issue I quickly decided that the new color would be Benjamin Moore's Steel Blue, a lovely blue grey that made me smile as soon as I saw it.     

Another big decision was what to put down for flooring.  The old carpet had to go since we'd had two small floods at one end of the room which resulted in about a third of the carpet being ripped up a year or so ago.   With the help of our interior designer friend, Lotus, we chose waterproof luxury vinyl in a deep walnut finish.   (We believe we've licked the water problem, but you never know.) 

I was really glad that we didn't do the installation when I saw how hard the two-man crew worked and what a great job they did.  

Ta da!  After a day's hard work the floor was down!  Ben is resting on the bed which the workmen kindly moved into its new position.  We were tired out from searching area consignment shops for some new-to-us pieces of furniture and getting rid of old things we didn't need anymore in this space.  I'm glad we live in a town where it's easy enough to find good used furniture and glad that we bought Ben's new old truck just in time to use in moving things in and out. 

Then we spent about a week prepping and then painting the ceiling and walls.  That was a lot of work!  We were too busy to take photos, but I'm sure you can imagine the chaos.  

But, finally it was over and now we have lovely space to watch our new 65" TCL screen, which Paul helped us pick out and get set up.   Check out the cool TV stand that Ben found online at Onkron.  It's on rollers so if you want to watch it while laying in the bed, you can roll it forward.  It also doesn't take as much space as the old style entertainment centers, and since we're just streaming nowadays we don't need shelves for components such as DVD players.  We moved the rug down from the old TV/guest room, the tail end of a sequence of moves involving rugs.     

In this photo you can see the bed area.  We moved the big ottoman from the small TV/guest room upstairs and it fits much better down here while providing another place to sit and a place to hold blankets to cuddle up in on our new-to-us chairs.  Can you tell when chair is "mine" and which is Ben's? 

And here you get an idea of how the rug offers an incentive to get down on the floor for some stretching.  The little ottoman (from Target!) is easy to move and the closet holds various straps and props used for stretching in front of the big mirror.   

So, it's all done now and we're very happy with the result.  We watched an action-packed movie down there last night and it was great, with lots of space and an open but still cozy feel. 

And in case you're wondering, this lovely swivel chair is "mine."