Basement Blitz - Before & After Teen Boy's Room

 As some of you know, we had a film crew in our house a couple of weeks ago filming a pilot for a TV series (so not a TV show yet but maybe one day!). Since my husband is a director, we were contacted about shooting a pilot and well, let's just say now we have a room in our basement. The show concept would feature the four Toronto champs from last year's Canada's Handyman Challenge that form a "reno dream team". So they decided to blitz a room in our basement and make it into a bedroom for my 17-year old son.  It was two days of madness but lots of fun, and of course, an amazing room at the finish!

One of the challenges this room had was hiding the electrical panel which is in the far corner and is one of the focal points.  So we came up with the idea of housing it behind a dartboard.  All you have to do is push on the frame of the dartboard and it opens up to the electrical panel.  What most people do is place a door here and I really didn't want that, because to me, it adds more attention to the area and everyone knows that the electrical panel is behind it.

Another focal point in the room was the door which is in the middle of an outside wall (above) and leads to the cold room under our front porch.  This door cannot be removed and is right in the middle of the room. Instead of drawing more attention to it by painting it out white, I decided to paint the door and the trim the same colour as the walls - Moonshine by Ben Moore.  The reno dream team then decided to put a guitar holder on it and an old broken skateboard.  I thought this was a great design idea because my son is really into skateboarding and guitar and the guys were able to use one of his broken skateboards.

My favourite thing in the whole space is actually the way you enter ... through a barn door!!   I've always wanted a barn door/loft door in my house so this was a great opportunity to try one.  Instead of going with a standard door, they decided to make me one and added their own touches.  I just love it!!!  This is a great way to make a space just a little different than the ordinary.  You can also see the door from the other part of the basement so it adds some visual interest at the end of the hall.

One other cool space they created was the desk area which is on the opposite side of the room. They used two existing shelves that my dad made for me about 30 years ago, and then cut an old door and fit it to go between the two bookshelves.  They also mounted one on the wall and placed the TV on it with some crazy lights behind it.  I love this idea.   In a society where we just throw everything out and start over, it was great to utilize what we had and re-purpose an old door.

So this is what the top floor of my house looked like during the filming...about $60,000.00 worth of cameras.

This is what the basement looked like before the carpenters arrived and I've also included a pic of what it looked like during the madness.  (I like pretty pictures so before pics are always hard for me to show but I realize people need perspective.)

Here's a pic of his upstairs bedroom before the move to the basement. (It was never usually this tidy!)

Sources:

Bedding:  Ikea & Homesense

Pillows:  PC, Homesense & Ikea

Chair, Side Table & Lamp: Ikea