01 September, 2010

Basement Office By Night


Is it charmingly rustic, like I have myself convinced it is because I spend half my waking hours here, or does it really still look like a basement? The room is doubling as a guest room, is unheated, but comfortable enough on all but the coldest days, and then I have a space heater. I like the exposed brick on the top half of the wall. The bottom half is half-painted green, half bare concrete. I was considering getting concrete paint in a warm terra cotta color to paint it over, so it looks even and complements the rest of the wall. Has anyone used concrete paint before? Thoughts?


The other half of the room has my desk. I had removed the grotty old drywall without putting anything else up, so the wall boards are still visible. The ceiling boards have been removed, too. Eventually, new boards will be put up.

For now, my budget is $0 -- any suggestions for making this room more cozy in the short term, or does it look okay? We hope to have a houseful of guests in early October, and I don't want the person who sleeps here to feel like it's a basement. At least there are two decent-sized windows.

5 comments:

PlantingOaks said...

Honestly, I think the biggest improvement would be a little 'less is more' aesthetic. You have a small room with a lot of interest going on already in the exposed brick, and when you add things hanging on the walls, or stacked on the tables, it starts looking cluttery, like a basement where you're storing the oddments that don't fit in the rest of your house.

I'd also love to see some brighter colors, particularly in the curtains. Right now there are four different neutrals on the same wall. I think picking a bright color from the bedspread for the curtains could focus that area a lot, and make it look more intentional and less 'leftovers'. Painting the darker concrete or exposed wood wouldn't hurt either. If you do break out the paint, I would really try to cut down on the number of different colors in the walls. You have green paint, exposed concrete, white painted brick, grey sill, beige curtain, beige carpet, wood furniture and a bright bedspread. I think getting down to one or two colors in addition to the brick would do a ton to make the room look unified and put together. We've never used concrete paint ourselves, but the incompetent POs painted the concrete floor of our laundry room, and it seems to be holding up fine, so if they could do it, I'm sure you can too.

Your idea of tile and scatter rugs from the earlier post sounds great too, though obviously that's not an immediate thing.

Oh, yeah, and it looks a lot better in the previous photos during daytime, but doesn't everything. I think with the sun coming in it looks perfectly cozy. The windows help a ton to make it un-basementy.

Karen Anne said...

I like it a lot the way it is. Nice and cozy.

Karen Anne said...

Now that I am looking at this again (I like it a lot), I'm thinking a small rug or two on the floor for comfort.

Anonymous said...

I love this the way it is too!!! It's charming...

(And you can see I'm catching up on blog reading!)

heehee

Sandy

Joanne said...

Thanks, Sandy!