Refreshing the Rumpus Room

Refreshing the Rumpus Room

The other day I mentioned that we have decided to repaint 5 rooms. Ugh! Are we suckers for punishment or what?? Seriously, it’s like a compulsion.

But after repainting the dining room from red to light blue last year and then the little hallway from black and yellow to white and light gray, we’ve been on a huge kick to lighten and brighten everything in this house. On our to-do list now is the living room, the entryway, and the rumpus room downstairs, all of which we’ll be painting for the second time, and then both of our “offices”/junk piles/disaster zones upstairs, which we (shockingly) have never painted.

The rumpus room is our first step. It was one of the first rooms we painted when we moved in four years ago, and we chose a sort of deep teal color (Sherwin-Williams Reflecting Pool). (Remember this?? Yikes!) We still think it’s a great color… it’s just not a great color in this room anymore. We spend a TON of time here, probably embarrassingly too much time — watching TV, eating dinner (because, um, who actually sits at their dining room table?), writing blog posts — but with very little natural light, even with huge windows, it’s always dark and kind of dreary. And that’s not a place I want to spend so much time!

This completely untouched photo is a pretty accurate representation of what the color and darkness actually look like in this room at midday. See what I mean about dreary? There’s nothing we can do about the fact that these windows face north and pretty much just look at our neighbor’s house, so there’s not a lot of light coming in. We also aren’t going to do anything about the dark woodwork, but we can at least make the room feel brighter and happier with paint and decorating.

Ta-da! What an awesome photoshop job, right? Um… Anyway, it should come as no surprise that we want to do a pale minty blue on the walls. We totally play favorites. I just love that color, but I also think it would work well with all of the orange we have going on in here (totally accidental by the way, but I love how it all came together). It would flow well with the rest of the downstairs (once the living room and entryway are also repainted), since you can see into almost every room downstairs from the couch. Plus, talk about light and bright! (Oh, and ignore the fact that the ceiling looks brown in this picture. I swear it’s white in real life.)

We’re not stopping with painting, though. While we’re really happy with the furniture we have now, after replacing the couch last year, there are still a few other tweaks we want to make, like hanging new white curtains instead of these too-small ivory ones that were supposed to be temporary; getting new side tables with straighter lines and a new rug if we can find one we can afford and agree on; painting the coffee table maybe white; someday replacing the horrible overhead lighting (track lighting, yuck!! and a fan we’ve maybe turned on once ever); and eventually someday reupholstering that orange vintage chair that has seen much better days. So some of those things are on the maybe/hopefully/someday/when-it’s-in-the-budget list, like the lighting and reupholstering and possibly the rug, but painting and side tables and curtains are all going to start happening very soon. I hope. You know how when you finally make a decision to change something and then you just want to do it rightnow? That’s where I am with this project.

Just to help you picture things a little better, in this photo you can see how the rooms fit together. The door on the right leads to the entry, which is currently yellow, but we’re thinking of a light gray. The door on the left leads to the pink living room. I looove the pink, but I’m also kind of sick of it, if that makes any sense. I think we’ll choose another pale blue, because that’s what we do, and also because then all these rooms will complement each other. Then beyond that, you can see the dining room.

Ok, so that’s the rumpus room plan. What do you think?! I think I need to get to work!

— Kerry