This past summer, I decided it was time to update the basement and paint all of the dark 1970's wood, white. It all started with wanting to paint the cabinets in the sewing room white, but if they were painted white then I needed to paint the dark doors and frames white. If I did that, then I should paint all of the dark wood in the basement white and then the walls along with them. Everything took two coats of primer and two coats of paint. It may have taken almost 3 months to do all four rooms down stairs, but it looks really great now. I love sewing in the newly painted sewing room.
This is always my favorite cupboard to look at in my sewing room. Eye candy to any seamstress.
The downstairs family room was converted to my oldest daughter's room when she decided that she didn't want to share a room with her sister anymore. She wanted a yellow room. So we settled for yellow bead board behind the white bookshelf with grey walls. It really makes the room pop. The bead board is really in and it covers up the terrible texture on the wall.
I don't know what the people who built our house were thinking when the put in this mantle. "Let's make the mantle pointed so it is practically useless and nobody will ever be able to put anything on it." I had plans to cut out the mantle and build a new one, but that required a lot of work. By the time we got around to this room, it was two months in and I was getting tired of the whole project. We decided to see what it would look like painted white and loved it. Hey, chevrons are in, right?
The awkward bathroom downstairs had dark brown louver doors coving the furnace and water heater. We had a man from a door company come over and bid $700 to replace each bifold door! No thank you! We were able to find each of the new doors at Home Depot for at most $60 plus the $4 knob. My husband said it was a lot easier to put in the bifold doors than the regular doors. Such an easy DIY project that didn't cost an arm and a leg.
However, in October, I noticed that a little of the white paint was already turning yellow. My husband took a small panel off the wall and we found a large crack in our pipe from the kitchen. Sadly, this crack created water damage in the cabinet and walls that we hadn't seen earlier. We had to take all of the cabinets off the walls and tear out the damaged sheet rock. The pipe got fixed easily, but it took us a couple months to put everything back together for a second time in one year.
Thankfully, we are ready to get up and running with Dreaming of Stitches in February of 2015. After having the shop closed for almost 6 months of 2014, I hope to be sewing a lot more than painting in 2015.
#dreamingofstitches #basementremodel #beforeandafter #whitecabinets #sewingroom
