Wow! I just typed 16, as in 2016! I can’t believe the new year has arrived! I have so many plans this coming year, but today I’m gonna share our next room and inspirational images. This post is all about the Den. This is the room just to the left when you enter the front door. The den will be Steve’s office and the only office in the house. My new office will be a barn/studio and needs to be a large space for all the creating I’ll be doing.
So let’s get right to it, shall we?
This is what the den looked like when we bought the house. Pink carpet and beautiful wood paneling. We would have left the wood, because it’s solid oak and in beautiful shape. However, in order to build up the floor we had to remove it. Not a single piece was broken during removal. You will be seeing it again!Here is another view of the fireplace in the room. Notice the glass mantel. What? Glass and dark chunky rocks, my favorite! Notice the sarcasm.You can see on the bottom, there are a couple of test rock paintings going on. My plan was to fill in the mortar to update the rocks. I planned to paint each rock one of five colors and then stain them. They actually looked really cool, and we liked the ones on the left. Since we did that, we’ve voted to just remove all the rock in the house. I feel so liberated saying goodbye to it. At least I tried to make it work. You can also see the mantel is gone and so is the tile. We save everything that can in anyway, be used again.Primer on the floors. I’m lucky to have a brother who is a contractor, and he tells me things to do along the way that just make things a little nicer. This was a big dog pee room so now the floors are sealed, never to see, hear, or smell the dog pee again. I used an oil based primer.This is what the room looks like right now. The sub-floor is complete and the room is finally level with the rest of the house. It’s basically ready to be put back together, just as soon as we remove the rock, that’ll be done this month. PS The wall paper refused to leave, that’s when I learned that the drywall guy can texture over it. This is what happens when people wall paper directly against the sheetrock.
So now that you see the raw space, what do you think? What would you do? I’m totally up for any suggestions. I will be building a bench seat that fills in the space under the front windows, and Steve has a large desk that will go in the room. I’m wondering what to do on the wall surrounding the fireplace. Should we keep the book cases or remove them? Texture the wall with wood or drywall it? Here are a few of the ideas I’m looking at:
So, those are my ideas so far. I’m realizing, as I go out shopping for the house that so much will have to wait until I can see the rooms painted and floors in. It really is about feeling as I go. This is definitely a journey that has already changed direction more times than I can count.
Also, forgot to mention that primer on the floor is genius! We also did this in our home’s bedrooms. When we ripped up the carpet we found several layers of carpet, in addition to a foam sub floor that had an absorbed a TERRIBLE smell. The oil primer on the plywood was key. No more smell.
Wow! Several layers of carpet?! What? That’s terrible! It was definitely the ticket, it already smells better! Thanks for the above comments too, and thanks for stopping by.
how about putting that beautiful molding back up and painting it high gloss black? Do all the trim pieces in the same black and then a light grey/taupe color on the walls. It would look masculine but the light paint color wouldn’t make it too dark. Just a thought.
Great idea about the paint! Our only problem with the moulding is the size, it fits on the wall, but it’s too high up over the windows! I think I’ll be using it for the window seat construction. Or, we could just use it on the wall space only. Thanks for the ideas!
Multi-ti-purpose Room 
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