I’m making progress on the home gym, although I’m at the point where progress is moving along pretty slowly because I’m working on the trim. I now have all of the trim installed, and it’s all wood filled and sanded. Today, I hope to start on caulking all of the trim so that I can start painting it on Thursday.
I also spent some time doing some wall repairs. If you’ll remember, I actually tried installing crown molding in this room along the longest wall (i.e., the wall between the home gym and the master bathroom), and then decided that I didn’t like it. Well, because of the way that crown molding is installed (nailed into the wall and the ceiling, with the different directions of nails creating tension that helps to hold the crown in place), removing crown molding inevitably damages drywall. I had already done one coat of drywall mud on those areas, but they needed another coat, along with some sanding.
Once that all of the prep work is done, specifically caulking all of the trim, I’ll be able to get all of the trim and wall touchups painted, and then I can actually start on some decorative stuff!
Speaking of decorative stuff, and thanks to all of your input, I’ve decided to build two shelving units, put them on casters, and have them flank a chest of drawers in the center of the closet area. I hope to find a chest of drawers on Facebook Marketplace or somewhere else local, and just paint it. I’d rather not have to build one. And then I’ll mount a TV on the wall over the chest of drawers.
I’ve decided that everything that goes into the room will be black and dark stained wood. I pretty much let my Water Rower determine that decision since it’s a beautiful walnut with black accents. So the shelves have black supports (both vertical and horizontal supports) with stained walnut color shelves. If I have enough walnut veneer left over from the bathroom, I may even use that for the shelves.
Many months ago, I had already selected a black flooring for the room, so that works into my black + walnut plan very well. I also purchased black curtain rods (yes, I will be hanging curtains in here because y’all know I love fabric!), and just last night, I decided to carry the Rustic Walnut Bamboo Shade that I used in the bathroom into this room as well. That shade is such good quality, and it’s so similar to what I have in the rest of the house, but at a much lower cost, so I decided to go for it. So once it’s all put together, my windows will go from looking like this…
To looking like this…
I know that there will be many varying opinions on that (the black curtain rod, covering up some of the stripes, etc.), but I think it’ll look very nice once it’s all done, and it’ll make the room cohesive with splashes of black and walnut throughout the room. I think it will also take the walls from being front-and-center and the main feature of the room to acting more as a backdrop, which I think Matt will appreciate. ? So the walls are for me, and all of the black and walnut is for him.
But that brings me to the entry of the room. When we moved this wall back (which made our hallway smaller and squared up the master bathroom), that made the entrance into this room quite long. And it’s also dark. I didn’t even think to add a light here, but I really think it needs one. So I’m conflicted. It seems like a perfect area to put a semi-flush ceiling light, and that would give me an opportunity to bring some black into this area as well (although, I’ll do that with what I put on the walls as well).
The other options is to put a super thin “recessed” light, like I have throughout the room. But that seems a little boring to me, and like a wasted opportunity, right? I’m leaning towards the semi-flush ceiling light unless someone has a good reason I shouldn’t do that.
And then there’s the door color, which I know I brought up a long time ago, but I’m still conflicted over. All of the doors in the hallway are a dark teal. There’s none of that color in this room, so I don’t want to bring that in there. The doors in the bathroom are white, but I don’t like that for this room.
So since I’m trying to use black accents in this room, what about painting the doors black? What do we think about this?
I think that looks nice, and adds a touch of sophistication to juxtapose the colorful striped walls. It’s just paint, so I supposed I could try it and see how I like it. And if I don’t, I can always move on to something else. I’m just not quite sure what other options there are.
EDIT: I decided to add the flooring to the picture above to see what everything would look like together. Here’s an idea of how this area would look with the black door and the flooring.
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
I hope you’ll join me on my DIY and decorating journey! If you want to follow my projects and progress, you can subscribe below and have each new post delivered to your email inbox. That way you’ll never miss a thing!
