Good morning friends!
It’s Week 5 of the Spring 2018 One Room Challenge and I have a special treat for today’s post – textiles. More specifically, blinds for the basement windows.
As per every week, I’ll start with the before image:
This is the theatre section of my parent’s basement and you can see in the photo how the basement windows have been ‘boarded up’ to block light. What you see are actual pieces of ¼” plywood, painted to match the walls, and then tucked into the window well. I love the ingenuity of it; with a projector shining the movie onto a screen, the room does have to be dark to get a crisp image, but I don’t love the look.
Enter my sweet and uber-talented friend Katherine at Sweet William Sewing Company. I challenged her to come up with a blind that would darken the room, hide the lower band of oak trim (which is there to conceal some up lighting) and coordinate with the plaid couch, green-ish love seat and blueish carpet.
Impossible right? That’s what I thought.
Now throw in the fact that I gave a busy business woman a tight deadline to work within… and she didn’t even blink.
But then that’s also one of the reasons I love Katherine so much… she handles the impossible.
Look at that fabric!
It has all the colours it needs to have to tie things together, its bold without being garish, and it brings in a roundness and softness to an otherwise angular room/decor.
I won’t say it was easy for her to install though. I made her work around the thin oak trim and large pieces of furniture. It also had to be hung below the upper crown moulding because it too covers part of the window (see photo 1), and hanging underneath it would have the roman blinds hanging inside the crown at the top, but outside the oak trim at the bottom and it just would have looked WEIRD.
There might have been a bit of swearing acrobatic work required.
I love you Katherine – you are such a good sport (and brilliant seamstress!) I am fully willing to give up one of my children as payment. You can even choose.
Isn’t it gorgeous?!
We have it hung so that the hem lines up with the wood trim to remove it from sight, but my parents can raise or lower it for movie nights.
I also picked up a couple of knickknacks from HomeSense to bring in a bit more of the blue, but you’ll have to wait until the final reveal next week to see it all.
So to recap:
Spring 2018 ORC – Parent’s basement makeover plan:
box up and/or remove offending itemschoose design planpaint trim BM Cloud Whitepaint walls BM White Down- incorporate neutral area rug into theatre section of room
get rid of gym equipment that isn’t usedbring in accents in BM Mount Saint Anne blue- paint accent wall in BM Mount Saint Anne blue – not happening after all
window coveringschange out artwork- stage space
Home Gym / Theatre Room progress:
- Week 1 – before shots and inspiration board
- Week 2 – the purge
- Week 3 – choosing a design plan
- Week 4 – paint colour
- Week 5 – textiles
- Week 6 – THE REVEAL!
Come back next week for Week 6 and the final reveal of my parent’s basement makeover and don’t forget to check out the progress on all the other awesome makeovers going on in this Spring 2018 One Room Challenge!
Have a great one!