Showing posts with label loft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loft. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Lofty celebrations: The Reveal! (A PARA Paints Blog Crew project)

sectional lounge end pm

In yesterday’s blog post, I told you the “Before” story of our loft makeover. And today is the “After” – a day I’ve been looking forward to for almost twelve years! Who says I don’t have any patience? ;-)

So the story left off with Charles the orange sectional and some blue colour chips. And what colour did I decide on? The loft is primarily a home theater, so I wanted to go dark on the walls. I decided on PARA Paints Rainy Skies. The trim is Climb The Mast.

 rainy skies climb the mast

I have to admit, I had an “OH MY GOD, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!” moment when the painter (a friend of ours)started rolling on the first coat. But as the old colour disappeared under Rainy Skies, I loved the transformation more and more. The dark blue went onto the walls and right up onto the vaulted ceiling – which you might think would make the room feel small, but the dark ceiling actually makes it feel like there’s no ceiling at all – it’s like you’re looking up at the night sky.

blue walls 1

Click here to read the railing saga, complete with a fire at the paint shop!

When the painting was done, it was time to have some decorating fun! Which was a bit of a challenge, because I really couldn’t condone going out and buying new stuff when we already have so much stuff in our house. The only things I bought are the cushions and orange throw and a piece of art. And we bought a few pieces of furniture at Ikea to hold the media components. Otherwise, everything in the loft came from somewhere else in the house.

I slightly modified my plan to create a reading nook with a chaise:

blue nook

And opted for a leather arm chair, cow print foot stool, and small side table. I prefer to buy original art, but the colours in this piece were perfect and for $15 at HomeSense, it was too good a deal to pass up :-)

art 2

reading nook 4 pm

I put my telescope in the opposite nook.

telescope 1 pm

This little seating area in the corner has two more leather arm chairs, an orange ceramic drum stool (originally bought for the back patio), and a floor lamp. I couldn’t resist buying the orange bicycle cushion :-) A triptych I bought years ago from my friend & artist Matt LeBlanc will go on the wall above the chairs.

leather chairs

When we bought the sectional for our family room a couple of years ago, we needed to put the sofa somewhere. Of course, it ended up in our loft, the home for wayward furniture :-)

beige sofa left end pm

My $7.00 lamp on a craftsman desk that I bought on sale at Pier 1ages ago and never had a real use for – till now :-)

beige sofa lamp 2

Originally, the colour scheme was going to be navy blue, orange, and purple. But I really liked the bright green on the floral cushion, and decided to add more bright green. This green & black plaid throw that I bought last summer in PEI at MacAusland’s Woolen Mills is the perfect addition :-) And it keeps me warm when I’m watching a movie!

orange sofa cushions 2 pm

A couple of years ago, I convinced hubby to make a metal & wood table like the Brickmaker’s tables at Restoration Hardware that are way out of my price range. My original plan was to use scraps of wood that we already had for the top, but then we found a beautiful piece of live edge spalted maple at KJP Select Hardwoods that I loved. It wasn’t quite wide enough for the metal base that hubby already made, so he added a strip of a dark African hardwood down the middle.

coffee table 2 pm

coffee table wide 2 pm

coffee table close 1 pm

A few years ago, I bought four chairs and a pedestal table from Kijiji. We refinished the table and refinished & reupholstered the chairs, and now they have a new home in the loft as a games table.

game table corner 2

Click here to read about the chair makeover and click here to read about the table makeover

Of course, you can’t have a home theater without a big-screen TV, right? Well, hubby grabbed the motto go big or go home and ran with it – he bought a projector and used Screen Goo to paint a HUGE 12’ wide screen on the wall. To hold all the components, we bought three tables at Ikea – a LACK TV bench and two LACK coffee tables – and lined them up together. The bench in the middle was shorter than the coffee tables, so hubby added pieces of oak to the bench legs to make it the same height.

unit under screen pm

Projector off:

room angle 2a pm

Projector on:

room angle tv on 2 pm

With a dark colour on the walls and ceiling, you really get an experience similar to watching a movie in a theater (especially at night when there’s no sunlight in the room).

from behind sofa 3 pm

She approves ;-) (Sorry the picture is crooked, but it was too funny not to use it :-) )

from behind sofa 1 pm

It took 12 years, but our loft has finally been transformed from a big empty unfinished space into a room that’s perfect for watching  movies and sports and entertaining friends. Who wants to come over on Saturday night for a game of Rock Band? ;-)

kelly sig

Thank you PARA Paints and Bonds Decor for providing the paint :-)

Coincidentally, Rachel at Hue recently wrote this blog post about why it’s best to paint a media room a dark colour. Rachel, I couldn’t agree more! :-)

Linking up to…

Between Naps On the Porch

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Lofty expectations: The Before Shots (A PARA Paints Blog Crew project)

You could say that our loft makeover has been a work in progress for 12 years. When we moved into our house in 2001, it was an amazing but unfinished 500 sq ft empty space above the main floor. Electrical was roughed in, drywall was mudded & sanded, subfloor was installed… it was the one major undertaking that I wanted to start on right away. But stubborn hubby insisted that we wait till the mortgage was paid off. He’s very pragmatic and annoying that way ;-) I would have gone ahead and started working on it anyway, but there was one little obstacle in my way – no stairs.

before25 before54

See that rectangular opening in the ceiling? That opening taunted me for five years. I walked by it every day, and it laughed at me and mocked me and wouldn’t let me go through it. Mean hole!

I did go up into the loft a couple of times, after I perfected my levitation skills ;-) No, actually, it required putting a long extension ladder on a basement step and climbing up the ladder and through the hole. Not fun if you’re like me and don’t like heights.

This is what the naked loft looked like:

loftRS1 naked14 naked34 naked44 naked510

Totally sweet space – what a bummer that we couldn’t use it!

And then the magical day arrived in 2007: Stair day! Some guys showed up at our house with the staircase all made and ready to install. It was a surprisingly easy and fast job. Well, it looked easy to me, anyway – I’m sure carrying that sucker and then putting it into place wasn’t a whole lotta fun ;-) The stair guys must’ve thought I was loony, the way I was going on and on about how excited it all was!

Weeeeehooooo!!!! The staircase is in!!!!

stairs installed

Next came painting the loft (BM Stone House, but that was destined to change – more on that a little further down). Given the fact that the ceiling is vaulted and the big gaping hole was still there and that I’m a klutz, we hired a painter friend to paint it for us.

Hubby and I installed the floor over the Christmas holidays in 2007. It’s heritage grade walnut in 4” wide planks and random lengths. The hardest part was figuring out the layout of the planks. Because of the variety in grain and lengths, we had to be sure to spread them out equally. It was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle – but with a great big power floor nailer! Here’s the unfinished floor:

floor sanded

After we installed the walnut, Luigi the flooring guy sanded the floor. The planks had micro-bevels that created small grooves. We wanted the grooves removed so the floor would be smooth. Poor Luigi had a LOT of sanding to do. He said he’ll never do anything like it again!

The walnut after being sanded and finished in a clear varathane to bring out the natural colour and grain:

floor varathane

Luigi also stained the oak staircase:

stairs stained

Looking down the stairs from the loft:

stairs looking down

And now the reason why the wall colour needed to be changed… we bought a super-comfy sectional a year after the walls were painted. It’s the Charles by Silva. He came from the manufacturer’s warehouse in Toronto. I think whoever ordered him decided they didn’t like the fabric, so he became a reject. I just had to give him a new home :-)

charles

Charles is a handsome guy, but with the tan walls and brown floor, the whole room was just too much of the same colour family. And as it turns out, Charles the Reject inspired the entire new colour scheme for the loft :-) I started with PARA Paints Designer Indulgence – a pretty teal, not too dark but not too light.

loft collage[8]

 Click here to read about the original plan.

And then after some colour suggestions from Kelly Berg at Story & Space and Dawna Jones at Dawna Jones Design, I moved towards darker blues.

dark blues

Click here to read about the modified plan.

So what colour did I choose? Well, I’m going to leave you hanging! Come back tomorrow to find out… :-)

kelly sig

Linking up to…

Monday, February 18, 2013

Moving over to the dark side-Two PARA Paints Blog Crew projects

I have two half-PARA Paints Blog Crew projects to show you this week. One is half done and one is one-half PARA Paint :-)

ParaPaint logo

The loft is painted, and I LOVE it! My final colour choice was PARA’s Rainy Skies. I had to repaint the baseboards (PARA’s Climb the Mast), which I got done this weekend, and now the loft is ready to be decorated – WOOT! So no final reveal pics today, but here’s a peek at the wall colour…

loft with orange sofa pm

Orange and purple are going to be the accent colours. I went a little cushion-crazy at HomeSense last week! Still deciding which ones to keep, which ones to get more of, and which ones to bring back…

cushions pm

The runner-up colour for the walls was PARA’s Potion. But I had another project in mind for it. I’d started painting a coffee table with Annie Sloan’s Paris Grey and Provence, but then decided to use Potion instead of Provence. I know I took some before pics, but I can’t for the life of me find them. But the coffee table is from the same set as this end table that I Annie Sloane-i-fied last year:

table before 2[6]

And this is how it turned out:

coffee table pm

Did you know that you can wax latex paint just as well as chalk paint? Yep, you can! I waxed the top and used a silver paint pen to highlight the groove.

top close 1 pm

I used pewter Rub N’ Buff on the pull…

pull close 2 pm

And the feet…

leg 1 pm

I haven’t decided if I should sand the base to give it a distressed look or apply some dark wax or just leave it as it is. What do you think?

coffee table 2 pm

Thanks to PARA Paints and Bonds Decor on Bank Street for providing the paint :-)

kelly sig