A Room With "Feeling"

We've all heard that a room's decor and design can evoke a feeling but I think it's important that a room has a feeling...or texture.  Texture is something we feel and something we can see.  When designing our living room I wanted to use texture to evoke a feeling of comfort that enveloped each visitor.  I wanted to textures to be as as natural as possible.

On the windows I mixed bamboo blinds with linen curtain panels.

As you read previously these blinds were a  tough decision.

Home Depot came through with the best options!  These blinds offer an overlapping bamboo so while they allow a little bit of light in they do not allow nosey neighbors to see in!The linen softens the hard wood blinds and offers an airiness to the large window.  These were an awesome find!  I searched all the typical curtain spots...it was a constant disappointment.  Then one day during a Target shopping trip I thought, it never hurts to look... Surprise! Right color, right texture AND right price!

Texture on the floor is very important.  Nothing is more amazing then the perfect texture under your feet!  We have beautiful hardwood floors that are amazing but they are hard...amazing on the eyes, but not so nice to the touch.

The rug purchase was another surprise...Lowe's.  Who knew they had an amazing rug department??  When I saw this rug I was immediately drawn to the simple colors and exciting texture.  This run softens all the harsh lines and woods in the room while offering an amazing feeling underfoot!  It is so plush the cats won't walk on it!

Rug shopping tip: Not sure how an area rug will look in your home on the existing floor?  If you're in a flooring or home store take the rug (or a smaller version of it) to the floor section and lay it on a floor similar to yours.  You'll be able to see how the colors and textures work together. 

The last bit of texture is a simple addition to any room - lamp shades. The lamp shades add a bit of a swirl to a room with straight edges and lines.  The swirl design is a simple stitching that offers a slight raised effect to the shade.


Don't be afraid to mix textures.  When you mix a variety of textures you create a room that has feeling!

Basement to Theater Room

This is an old remodel but I thought it was important to include since it's an amazing transformation! A dark dingy room that was used for storage and to house some spiders (mice too apparently) turned into an awesome theater room that is nothing less than impressive on movie nights!

The Before

Once we got the room cleared out we needed to really clean!

This picture illustrates the before and after of my cleaning! It was disgusting!  But such an amazing difference made it fun!

A result of rewiring the house years ago was the missing ceiling tiles in the basement.  We needed to remove the remaining ceiling and put a new one up.  A very tedious job, ripping the staples out...finding dead mice! (Very traumatic for me!)

Recessed lights were installed strategically with dimmer switches. (There is not enough blog space in the blogosphere to cover the stories of "the electrics"...let's just say there are many wires and many switches that were changed many times!)

We also decided to cut part of the stair wall down to make the room seem larger. Instead of a straight wall floor to ceiling we angled it to match the angle of the stairs.  It does make a difference - much easier to get things up and down the steps as well! 

Next step was paint!  We wanted a fun color scheme and something that would be bright enough to make up for the fact that there are no windows, but could still be dark for movie viewing.




We went with an orange with one blue wall for an accent behind the "screen."

Once all the walls were painted we were able to lay the hardwood floor. 

 I should mention that yes, this is a basement and it has even experienced flooding but we re-caulked some installed flood tracking and felt that the warmth hardwood would bring outweighed the risk. 

The hard work was well worth it! (Everyone enjoys it!)