In my basement I am lucky enough to have a room with a hardwood floor and a fireplace. Unfortunately the idiot scotch-tape wielding jackasses (they’re like eighty, so on one hand I feel bad calling them jackasses, on the other hand do you know how many pieces of tape I have had to peel off my walls?) that used to own this house at some point painted the fireplace brick blue. Because nothing says classy like blue brick.

Here is the heavily touched up before picture. In reality, there was one light bulb in this room casting its glow on dingy walls, and about 50 linear feet of shelving.

Here’s how the basement fireplace looks without the hideous blue brick. (Yeah, the same brick that everyone said would be “so hard” to plaster over… and my everyone, I mean the Effing contractor who keeps giving me these looks when he goes by projects I’ve started in my own house, like “Oh, you’re going to do it that way?” He even told me he could fix up the wood stairs I’m refinishing with a paint sprayer. He is a generic, obviously. You don’t pain over beautiful old wood forgodsake! I have to laugh at him, because if I lose my sense of humor I’m going to snap and end up paint-spraying him into oblivion.) So I just can’t resist saying Nah-nah, Na Nah-nah. And it will look even better with the frame and mantel.

And a couple coats of Sherwin-Williams “Spanish olive” later, ta-da!

(Voice of God here again, since I opted-out of continuing to live with the boyfriend in residence at the time of this post… who took the furniture with him,  the basement was then converted to my very own office.)

The desk is made of an old door, a fun little project you can read all about here. LINK And is soon to be moved back upstairs, so there will eventually be a third incarnation of this room.

Tags: bookshelves, Desk, plaster