We are ready to pull the trigger on ordering some key finishes for our basement remodel. This is where our white box gets interesting. I want to show you what we are planning for paint, carpeting, flooring, and tile. We have taken our time making all of these choices. They have come through lots of window shopping, taking home samples, and comparing against other finishes.
The main living spaces, encompassing the family room, game room, play room, and kitchenette, will feature the below finishes. Most of the space will have white walls in Martha Stewarts Tailor’s Chalk. The medium-tone blue, called Mariner, will make an appearance in the playroom. The dark blue, called Wrought Iron, is the color inspiration for refinishing my retro dresser into the family room media center.
The family room and play room will be carpeted in Martha Stewart Mount Vernon Shale Gray. They did not have take home samples of this color in the store, so we ordered a large 6 x 9″ sample online of this color and a few others we are considering. You have to pay for the larger samples, but Home Depot refunds the cost of the samples when you place your carpet order. The kitchenette and mud room area will have cork flooring. This cool grey/green cork is called Smoky Mineral by Millbrook (we found this one at Home Depot, but Lowe’s has a nearly identical cork). We have something special planned for the bamboo…more to come.
Our home gym is getting some special treatment. We debated putting cork in there, too, but opted instead for a gym floor. The charcoal carpeted floor is actually thick rubber floor tiles with a carpeted top. They interlock like giant puzzle pieces. The home gym has no natural light, so white walls looked very sterile. To brighten up the room we are painting the walls in Martha Stewart Sparkling Brook. I am showing the carpet here, because the adjacent playroom will be carpeted. The carpet will butt up to the gym floor in the doorway.
Neither of us hesitated for a second when we saw this denim glass tile for the bathroom. This amazing blue glass subway tile will be used for the shower walls. We are thinking of installing it vertically. The bathroom will be painted in Tailor’s Chalk. We still need to select another tile to use behind the vanity. The mirror over the vanity will be painted in Wrought Iron. The flooring will be cork, continuing into the bathroom from the adjacent mud room area.
You might think we chose finishes for each room separately, but we actually considered all of these as a whole. We found the carpet and cork first and then each additional finish was compared against those. We went through more than a dozen floor samples before settling on the bamboo. When considering the paint color for the home gym, even though it is an isolated room, we considered how it would flow with the rest of the space.
These are the finishes that will provide a neutral, albeit a little blue, base for injecting color into our big white box. To peak your interest, just imagine pops of yellow and turquoise throughout.
It’s hard to tell if that carpet is grey or blue! Grey is nice and neutral, blue is definitely more taste specific. I bet adding all this square footage is increasing the value of your home a lot, did you give a lot of consideration to keeping it neutral for resale value?
Hannah,
The carpet is hard to discern. It is a grey/blue depending on the lighting. Resale value is always important to consider, but having lived in a home we were trying to sell for nearly 4 years and keeping it neutral was sad for us. We aren’t planning on going anywhere for a while, so we want to make the space a room we will love top to bottom. It is no fun living in a home decorated for someone else.
Jackie,
I bet once you are done that your family will spend more time there than upstairs. Love your choices. I babysat for a family that loved the color blue so much that everything major in the house was blue – walls, carpet, curtains and the furniture had blue in the pattern. I loved their decorating style and their kids. They were such fun!
Maureen