My new favorite room

Happy Friday and how the heck are ya? I’m ready for a weekend of NOTHING because I’ve been working my tail off on the basement for the past week. Lots of good stuff has been happening that I can’t wait to show you!!

But I had to share the best first. It’s a little ridiculous how excited I am about this part of the basement. I’d be more than a little embarrassed if you had seen the happy dances I’ve been doing in this room over the past couple of weeks. ;)

But there have been many happy dances.

Welcome to my little piece of heaven…the storage room:

Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL? No? Well, I think it is. ;)

I wanted to share it now, before drywall, so you can see the whole thing. (I know you would be sad if you couldn't.)

That pic above is taken standing in our future laundry room. (I know many of you are curious about our reasoning on that, so that’s an upcoming post.) I am full of absolute JOY at the thought of a dedicated laundry room, but let’s talk storage for now.

This part of the basement was framed in last week, and we did this first so we could decide how to make the laundry room work. I’m finding I’m SO GLAD we are dragging this process out a bit…doing one step at a time has allowed us to figure out exactly where we want to put each wall, each outlet, each light. I’ve changed my mind where one wall was supposed to go three times, and the final result is perfect.

If we had done it all at once I am pretty positive I would have wished we had done something different. Because we’re taking it slow we get to live with it for a bit along the way and figure out exactly how we want things.

Anyhoo, her she is, the beauty, my “store”:

This room houses our drain and sump pump, so it will stay unfinished. There won’t be any drywall on the interior, no flooring, no finished ceiling.

But I think it’s beautiful. ;)

They weren’t even going to frame out the back wall, but I know I wanted to hang shelves everywhere, so I asked them to do that as well.

I wanted to maximize every bit I could, so I made a small bench that I put over the sump (tall enough to clear the pipes) and piled a few bins on top:

These are the only bins that don’t fit in the under the stairs storage. I am delirious. :)

I made the bench with scrap wood from the garage and extra butcher block from our kitchen island. (And all I gotta say to Stink Eye Sis is nannynannybooboo, told you I’d use all that scrap wood! Booyah!)

I got the wood at Lowe’s and cut it down, then hung the shelves with simple, cheap brackets:

I went as high as I could, knowing there wouldn’t be a ceiling going in. The tall stuff goes up there in between the rafters. Beams? I have no idea what they are:

And I had room to store all of my paint along the bottom:

Why does this make me so happy??? It does.

I used to tie back all of our drapes, so I have a ton of hardware left that I used. Years ago I came up with a way to use it for organizational purposes:

I hang them high and then put long, hard to store stuff across. Like curtain rods, cord hiders…whatever.

I’ve had this pretty pair for about ten years:

I got them on clearance at Pottery Barn, and have kept them all these years cause I think they are beautiful and I want to figure out a way to use them. For now, they hold more long stuff. ;)

Remember my craft area down here?

I’ve purged and reorganized SO MUCH. Most of the items on the shelf to the right are still in the basement, just in another spot. The next shelf was tools and all of those went up to the garage last year. The rest? PURGED. It used to take four sets of shelves (plus a small table for paint supplies) to hold everything.

Now it’s all in this six by seven foot space, neatly organized:

(Plus TONS of other stuff that was elsewhere!)

What’s even more awesome is that about a third of this will go up in the dining room when it gets the big transformation this year.

So there will be more space on the shelves so I can buy more stuff keep it really organized. ;)

Our house has always had plenty of storage space (hello, unfinished basement!), but it’s never had a storage room – a room with a door and walls that I can close off and not have to look at. THIS is what makes me giddy!

And seriously, if I’m this excited about a totally unfinished room, the basement is only going to get better from here, right? :)

This weekend I hope to get an actual pretty project completed. It won’t be as awesome as this (what else would be?), but pretty. (I hope!)

Hope you have a great one!!

Metallic Christmas Table

Hello hello! Hope you had a lovely weekend!

I finished up our Christmas dining room today and I am smitten! Layla is kicking off our Holiday Home link ups tomorrow morning, so I had to share what I’ve been up to!

I’ve wanted to change up the centerpiece in the dining room for some time now – I love those glass candleholders in the framed out mirror, but it’s been a couple years now and I was craving something different!

I tried a few different ideas, none which were it. And then finally…it came to me.

I swear anymore I have to sit on a space mentally for about six months before the final idea comes into my noggin. But once I’ve figured it out in my head, I usually love the result. This time is no different. (Thank goodness. Whew.)  ;)

I started with a few trips to a few different Goodwill stores. I was on a mission – a mission for brass candlesticks:

You know – the ones you see gracing the shelves on every trip into Goodwill? And of course when I decided to do this project, they were harder than heck to find. Sheesh. It’s like brass is coming back or something. ;)

I have a confession to make…I actually kind of liked these as they were. Kind of. Kind of more that I’d like to admit. They were more antiqued brass than shiny brass. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But I had a vision in mind, and that vision included spray paint:

I started by spreading them all out in the garage:

Then sprayed them all with a primer:

Then I put them into three groups and sprayed each one in a different metallic color. One group was Krylon Caramel Latte, one was Krylon Nickel, and one was Valspar Gold.

Let me tell you – that gold color was BEAUTIFUL. It is really awesome – although I hated the new nozzle. It was SO hard to spray with.

When they were dry, I just mixed the different colors in the mirror centerpiece, then filled it with bits of greenery and green and brown ornaments:

I tried to vary the heights as much as I could, but otherwise they are just on there, no rhyme or reason:

The place settings are pretty standard – white dinnerware I got from HomeGoods a while back (I wanted to brighten up the table so I sold the dishes and place mats that we used for years), my goblets from Goodwill and the sparkly brown bulbs that sit in the bowls were from Hob Lob years ago.

When I got it all together, I wanted to add the napkins to the table but didn’t have any napkin rings that worked.

I was standing in the garage when I saw my solution -- I grabbed a cardboard roll that some fabric came on, cut it down on my saw and got these:

After sanding down the edges and then spraying them in the gold Valspar spray paint, I got some very quick, very free DIY napkin rings:

And I gotta say, I really like how they turned out!

I love how the candlesticks give some height to the table, but you can still see through them:

The metallic colors are so pretty and I figure they’ll work all year round – it looks beautiful without the Christmas filler too!:

I wanted to keep the green and brown theme in this space to go with my Walmart ornament vignette I put together last year:

All of the ornaments were a buck and all of them are SO FUN!:

I was totally bummed to see that Walmart doesn’t have all of these ornaments again this year! They still have a bunch of pretty sparkly ornaments for cheap, but not quite as cute as these were.

Of course, just like any Christmas decor – the table looks most magical at night:

Wowza! I love it!!

Candlelight – I don’t think you can beat it! It’s just beautiful.

Makes you want to cook a four course meal at 10 p.m. on a Sunday for your husband and eat by candlelight beautiful:

Of course I don’t keep the candles lit if we’re not in here, which is OK, cause I love it when they’re not lit too.

But there’s some definite magic when the only light comes from the candles and the tree:

LOVE!!

The total cost was probably around $30? The candlesticks ranged from $1 to $3 each and I had all of the spray paint colors but the gold color. I think that one was $5. It took me about an hour to spray paint all of the candlesticks.

Not too shabby for a new look in the dining room – and one I’m a little giddy over:

Do you see those chairs? Yeah…that’s another project I’ve been sitting on (HA! Sitting on…get it?) for the past six months or so. ;) Can’t finish those till I finish the drapes, and I don’t want to finish the drapes till I decide if I’m going to repaint the room.

So…yeah. :)

Can’t wait to see all of your beautiful tablescapes at Layla’s tomorrow!

*You can see how I created the original centerpiece here.

**The December Before and After Party will go up Monday evening!

Linking this up to Julia’s party!