The Basement

Between being out of the house this morning and total nap fail this afternoon, I wasn't able to get any new projects started.  However, I woke up from my 20 minute nap inspired to take on the basement.  It's on the list of projects at #16 and #17.  Below is a picture of the current sad space I do laundry in.  It's not a true before picture because I've already painted the wooden wall on the right and the pillar beside it. (And one brick on the back wall for fun.)  Before the current lively lavender/pink, it was the nastiest shade of dirty light yellow I've ever seen.  With bits of split pea green.  Needless to say, it needed brightening.

I didn't exactly pick out the new wall color; it picked me.  I know that my local Home Depot has good deals on oops paint, so I started watching the paint counters to see what would show up.  Surprisingly, someone refused to buy this lovely shade.  Anyhow, it met my criteria of being semi-gloss, bright enough, and not nasty yellow.  It was a paint/primer combination, but I don't know that I'd actually buy the paint/primer combination if I were out paying full price.  Here's the stairwell going back up to the kitchen.  I've already attacked the side of it with the lavender/pink - it used to be a very bland grey blue.

My plan, influenced by my mother in law and Mary Engelbreit, is to brighten the space up with a floor mat and a wall mural.  My mother in law makes adorable hand painted mats sealed with polyurethane, so I'm going to try making one too.  The floor currently is bare concrete, and very difficult to keep clean.  (Shoes are REQUIRED for basement visits.)  Never mind that occasionally little rivers run across it when there's been a lot of rain.  And I absolutely hate it when bits of laundry hit the floor on their way out of the washer or dryer; I feel like I need to wash them again to get the filthy floor dust off them.  So if I had a nice mat, it would both brighten the place up and give me a cleanable floor covering, which takes care of both problems.

The Mary Engelbreit inspiration came mostly from the colors of oops paint I was able to pick up.  I have some dusty blue, peach, rose, a couple of greens, some yellow and orange, and combined with the color for the wall, it reminded me of happy Mary Engelbreit designs.  I also already had this book: Mary Engelbreit Decorating Ideas: Projects to Make for Indoors and Out.  It's full of really cute designs complete with templates for you to make your own ME paradise.  I love the quilt pieces in the book, and thought I'd base my design around that.  I bought the fabric to make the mat months ago, but got stalled when I couldn't decide on a final design.  (I've noticed that happens a lot - when I hit a point in a project where I have to make a decision, it just sits... and sits...)  When I woke up from my brief nap today, I realized it didn't matter, I don't live down there, I can't recreate an ME original or anything like it on the wall, so just put something together already.   After a little bit of web searching this afternoon, I found some additional inspirations from Simplicity's free quilt pattern archive.  Check out the Rise and Shine Quilt and Prairie Flowers Quilt.  They're both fun and happy and pick up on the ME-style flowers I want to use in my design. 

I had a free minute after dinner to start working on my design for the floor mat.

Well, Rome wasn't built in a day.  I guess I'm working on this at Craft Day tomorrow while the little ones hopefully sleep.