Here are pictures of my mom's sewing room, which is in her basement, a room that is about 12x16. I designed the whole room starting with the idea of using the cheesecloth technique shown in Country Sampler's Decorate with Paint issue of September 1998 and a painted border shown in the same issue.
My mom had some left overs of the light blue paint used on the upper wall and wanted to use it, so we just had to choose a dark blue that went with it for the lower wall and an even lighter one for the ceiling.
Unfortunately, I don't have before pics, but it is not too hard to imagine: 4 white walls, a white ceiling, ugly green curtains, a very worn sewing table, a very yellowish-white bookshelf and a stained with crayon fake wood laminate table. All that ugly stuff plus the freezer and the white armoire which were ok. Having the white armoire and freezer, I thought white would be a good color (well, if we can call white a color! LOL) to use with the blues.
So we painted the ceiling, all the walls, did the cheesecloth technique on the lower wall, and painted the trims. We then taped and painted a white border. After that, we sponge-stamped the border with the same blue paints mixed with glaze.
Once the walls were done, it was time to refresh the furniture cause my parents did not have money to buy new stuff. Mom tried to strip the old varnish off her sewing desk but only the top turned out nice, so we decided to paint the bottom of the desk white and the sewing chair too. She recovered the seat and back of the chair with some nice navy blue fabric. For the table that is made of fake wood laminate, I did a faux tile treatment in the center and a crackle border. We left the legs fake wood to sort of match with the desk. Mom also painted the little bookshelf cause it was very yellowish. She bought two pine shelves and some brackets to put on the wall. She stained them to make them the same colour as the top of the desk and the legs of the table. She also built the thread spool holder and painted it. The little chair you see beside the mannequin was found in the trash on mom's street. It only needed a good cleaning. There is now a little table besides that chair for the telephone.
For the accessories, we went to the dollar store and bought all sorts of stuff (little baskets on top of the blue cupburbs; little watering can and clay pots on the bookshelf, dried flowers). Mom made some simple window treatment with some cotton lace and we also used all her stuff to decorate the room: her sewing baskets, her knitting needles in a jar, her photo albums, books, etc.).
The 3 frames above the bookshelf were painted (cause they were black before) and I used wallpaper images taken from samples of wallpaper (for free!) at the home depot store.
I am really proud of how the room turned out. This was my first experience decorating a room from start to finish and I must say it turned out pretty much as I had planned it in my head. And the best part of it all was to do it with my mom. We had a lot of fun and also, she LOVES it. She says that she can now sew plenty of clothes for me in there and it won't botter her a bit! LOL
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