Welcome to the Galley
Finally.. the bar and basement are looking somewhat finished. Take a seat. :)
click the pictures to see them bigger...
Brandon has done a lot of work to the bar area, he completely rebuilt the top, bent the metal himself and everything. We saved a lot of money here by doing this ourselves.
Here are the before pictures:
pretending to be bartender... :)
god I am so happy we got rid of that horrible vomit pink color. it was seriuosly pinkish... ??
One of the first, cheapest, and biggest, changes we made to the room that you probably can't tell from the pictures here is we changed the lighting... There are like 5 lights in the ceiling here... and they were all these terribly terribly bright fluorescent lights. FLUORESCENT!! I hate fluorescent lighting. We replaced the 3 shown in the photo above with some warmer and prettier tungsten lights, and then bought some specialty lights for above the bar and installed a dimmer for those lights. That ALONE made this room 10 times more livable. I love watching a movie with snacks on the bar with the lights set so you can just see the bar and surroundings... it's a great atmosphere :)
Everyone thought we were crazy when we wanted to paint the basement burgundy. It's too dark, it will make the room look and feel smaller, blah blah... but the feeling we wanted to evoke down here was that of a bar, or a movie theatre since that's what we would spend our time doing down here. I think the burgundy is perfect.
and yes.. that is painted over wood paneling... I know, I know. There are a few major issues that I would fix down here if I had the money. Like I would love to have a tin tile ceiling, but it's just not going to happen with the budget. I think Brandon kinda likes the stripes in the walls though.
The couch is donated by friends of ours and the cool coffee table we picked up at a vintage furniture store. It's nice when we have a party because there are 3 little ottomans that can be pulled out from underneath that can act as extra seating.
We didn't paint the entire room burgundy, because I agree that it would have felt a little boxed in... we chose this light gray color to compliment it. The gray also brings out the silver/metal that is used throughout the room. We also got to do that cool thing where you paint the inside of shelves a coordinating color... I love the burgundy inside the shelves :)
In this pic you'll see another big change we made to this room... The Media Center. If you check out the second before pic up there you'll notice these completely useless shelves on the right hand side? Well... I had a dream... a dream that this could be our movie room and the TV could be comfortably seen and also be tastefully tucked out of the way. So... my uncle came over and started sawing things and there was a huge mess and a hole in the wall (I apologize for anyone who visited us in that time, I know it didn't look great... ) And again Brandon did a great job of finishing it with some skillful moulding. I especially like the decorative piece just above the TV set. And voila - movie watching began :)
This is probably the most used room in the entire house now. It feels so much cozier. There are many things I would still change (like the addition of this $3000 sofa we've been eyeing... ) but from where we started out... we are in a MUCH better place :)
click the pictures to see them bigger...
Brandon has done a lot of work to the bar area, he completely rebuilt the top, bent the metal himself and everything. We saved a lot of money here by doing this ourselves.
Here are the before pictures:
pretending to be bartender... :)
god I am so happy we got rid of that horrible vomit pink color. it was seriuosly pinkish... ??
One of the first, cheapest, and biggest, changes we made to the room that you probably can't tell from the pictures here is we changed the lighting... There are like 5 lights in the ceiling here... and they were all these terribly terribly bright fluorescent lights. FLUORESCENT!! I hate fluorescent lighting. We replaced the 3 shown in the photo above with some warmer and prettier tungsten lights, and then bought some specialty lights for above the bar and installed a dimmer for those lights. That ALONE made this room 10 times more livable. I love watching a movie with snacks on the bar with the lights set so you can just see the bar and surroundings... it's a great atmosphere :)
Everyone thought we were crazy when we wanted to paint the basement burgundy. It's too dark, it will make the room look and feel smaller, blah blah... but the feeling we wanted to evoke down here was that of a bar, or a movie theatre since that's what we would spend our time doing down here. I think the burgundy is perfect.
and yes.. that is painted over wood paneling... I know, I know. There are a few major issues that I would fix down here if I had the money. Like I would love to have a tin tile ceiling, but it's just not going to happen with the budget. I think Brandon kinda likes the stripes in the walls though.
The couch is donated by friends of ours and the cool coffee table we picked up at a vintage furniture store. It's nice when we have a party because there are 3 little ottomans that can be pulled out from underneath that can act as extra seating.
We didn't paint the entire room burgundy, because I agree that it would have felt a little boxed in... we chose this light gray color to compliment it. The gray also brings out the silver/metal that is used throughout the room. We also got to do that cool thing where you paint the inside of shelves a coordinating color... I love the burgundy inside the shelves :)
In this pic you'll see another big change we made to this room... The Media Center. If you check out the second before pic up there you'll notice these completely useless shelves on the right hand side? Well... I had a dream... a dream that this could be our movie room and the TV could be comfortably seen and also be tastefully tucked out of the way. So... my uncle came over and started sawing things and there was a huge mess and a hole in the wall (I apologize for anyone who visited us in that time, I know it didn't look great... ) And again Brandon did a great job of finishing it with some skillful moulding. I especially like the decorative piece just above the TV set. And voila - movie watching began :)
This is probably the most used room in the entire house now. It feels so much cozier. There are many things I would still change (like the addition of this $3000 sofa we've been eyeing... ) but from where we started out... we are in a MUCH better place :)