I know some of you enjoy home design projects, so if that’s you, read on!

We are planning a huge kitchen and first floor renovation — our architect/designer is finalizing plans, and demo and construction will start in the fall! But in the meantime we have been slowly redesigning our finished basement den. For 16 years it has been a mishmash of furniture from our old house, inherited items, nasty old carpet, and storage. We wanted to redo the space to be a hangout area that suits our new needs, now that we have been empty nesters for a while. The vibe is to be clean and contemporary, with eclectic touches in art and accents.

So far we’ve:
- sold or donated lots of the items and furniture, still some to go
- had the old carpet torn out and replaced with LVP flooring
- turned the storage room into a workout room
- installed new LED lighting throughout
- chosen a new paint color for the walls
- bought a new sectional and two chairs, plus tables and floor lamps, and a new TV that is mounted on the wall instead of taking up a big console.

The new living space is divided roughly in half, with one side being the fireplace/TV/sectional area, and the other being the music listening area, with two swivel chairs placed for optimal sound from our stereo speakers, which we already own but have been up in the living room, with the turntable in an awkward, hard-to-access cabinet. There will be a new custom record cabinet in the den, to hold our big vinyl collection, and the turntable will sit on top where it is easy to operate.

I designed new built-in shelving and cabinetry that is being built by a local woodworker and installed by a contractor. There will be cabinetry and shelves flanking the fireplace on one end of the room, and floating shelves in a staggered pattern on the facing wall, flanking a large painting that was made by a dear friend of my husband. The woodworker is also making the record cabinet for us. All of these wood projects are possible because of a huge black walnut tree that fell at the ranch in Texas several years ago — we had the tree milled and the wood is GORGEOUS! Oh, we are also getting a beautiful new dining table top from that wood (keeping the old base).

We’re also replacing an old, sticky, cheap sliding glass door in the den with a new, larger, more modern one that looks out to our backyard garden, and removing an old redundant metal door and two old windows to make wall space for the built-ins on either side of the fireplace. We’re also converting the wood burning fireplace to gas. We are also really excited that the new room will provide wall space for some of our favorite art, some of it decades old and some of it very new.

Whew! It’s a lot and it’s happening bit by bit, but the basement will be finished in early September, just in time to start getting ready to clear out the first floor in preparation for that massive project!

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a little design detail that made me chuckle. We’ll soon see if it works. The flooring in the space is a light cool-toned, almost greige-ish wood pattern, the wall paint is an quasi-cool neutral that looks slightly blue in the downstairs light but almost khaki in daylight. The sectional we got is a deep denim blue, and the chairs are grey leather. I’ve also selected a camel-colored leather ottoman for the sectional and velvet throw pillows in a similar color. After looking through what felt like a million rugs in stores and online, I kept coming back to the one in the first photo. It ties together the cool and warm tones in the room and is modern and a bit of a statement, since the furniture itself is simple and neutral. This rug will define the listening area.

I then had to find a smaller rug to go in the sectional area. Not much of it will be visible, but I wanted a bit of color and pattern on that side of the room too, since everything there so far is solid and neutral. I found this zig-zag pattern rug in pic 2, and the colors seem really good! It might be crazy but it was super cheap and it’s all returnable. But for a reluctant pattern mixer like myself, I think this works, oddly enough.

If you’ve actually read all this, thanks for indulging my novella! I will share more pics of the project and progress if anyone’s interested! It has actually been fun to see it slowly come together. I’m a little nervous because I’ve never designed furniture for actual production before, but I think the shelves will be really cool. I’ll edit the post to add a drawing when I get a chance later.