Interior Design with
Julia Luttrell
Making your fantasy room a fact
Here’s a fantasy for you. Imagine one of those designers on TV, showing
up with her terrific team of trades people to magically transform the
room of your choice. Say that 12 by 20-foot basement space for instance,
you know, the one that’s presently masquerading as the world’s largest
suitcase? Picture it as a bright, beautiful family room, completed in
its entirety over a weekend and on a limited budget!
Unlike the television show, however, in the real world trades people
actually get paid for their work, which can be as much as three times
the cost of materials. But fear not, if you have the will, we have the
skills! In interior design, it’s the creation of illusions to alter
space, that is the real magic that makes your fantasy room a fact.
Oh, you can recruit friends and family to do it yourself. Or, with the
money you’ve saved from the creative use of materials at hand, you can
hire a designer to do it for you. Either way, here are a few adaptable,
affordable ideas to deal with some of the fundamental design dilemmas
you’ll encounter.
The most glaring practical realities you’ll be presented with in your
basement room are the bare concrete floor and the challenge of
horizontal windows, very oddly placed so close to the ceiling. But once
again, the creative solutions lie in illusion.
Let’s start with the floor for example. You would love to have a
maintenance free, durable ceramic tile, but by the time you put in the
necessary sub floor, this process would eat up about $3,500, your entire
budget to complete the whole room.
Instead, here’s how to get the luxurious look of gorgeous, Italian
ceramic tile, without the cost or the disruption of building a sub
floor.
Combine a half-and-half mix of enamel latex paint and glaze in a medium
taupe colour. With a paint roller, apply it wall to wall onto the clean,
dry concrete floor and allow this base coat to dry completely.
Now, using half-inch wide masking tape, map out a grid pattern of
two-foot squares, starting in the middle of the room and working your
way out toward the walls.
Once your grid is in place, roll on a diluted mix of latex paint and
water. Use three parts water to one part paint, in a colour several
shades lighter, or darker than your base coat. This diluted paint will
dry very quickly, so you must work in four by four-foot sections, and
with a partner.
Pre-cut five by five-foot sheets from inexpensive thin plastic, also
known as painter’s drop cloth. As soon as one person rolls the diluted
paint over the area, the other person lays the sheet of thin plastic
over the wet paint. Allow the plastic sheet to fall wherever it may and
avoid smoothing it out. Instead, randomly pat it down here and there,
and then rip it off instantly, before it has a chance to dry. The glazed
finish will now stand out in contrast to the freshly applied paint.
Go over the entire floor in this way and allow it to dry totally. Once
you remove the masking tape, the revealed concrete so successfully
imitates grout lines, that the alternate shiny and matte faux finish
creates a dramatic illusion that is a fabulous facsimile of real ceramic
tile.
As for the windows,
if you prefer the casual elegance of a relaxed country setting, the
following design idea is relatively self-explanatory and work equally
well to draw the eye away from their odd location.
For a more casual approach, as seen in the sketch, the use of shutters
suggests a ‘country Dutch-door’ effect which is reinforced by a window
box mounted just below the window, which is filled with live red
geraniums and trailing ivy.
These inspirational ideas will produce the fundamental palette of your
project. With a mere fraction of your funds spent, you’ll have plenty
left over for more magical maneuvers to make your fantasy room a fact.
So enjoy yourself, have fun with it, and please, let me know how it
goes!
