Aka, the theater at the (bottom of the basement) stairs:

So, so excited 😃 The townhouse already has 3 real bedrooms, and since I’m using the rumpus room as the goffice and barely need one let alone two guest bedrooms, this space is free for dreaming big dreams and doing something a little (or a lot) fun –

… Very much a blank slate.

I don’t expect to put a lot into this – it needs dark paint, and despite my neighbor’s assurances that she wouldn’t be able to hear me watching Star Wars at all hours and wouldn’t care if she did, some soundproofing (which will also look cool).

And it needs to be cleaned out because the second I moved in it just immediately became storage and started looking like this:

Looking at dark paint options, I decided to go super dark navy. The whole house is being repainted in very flat-finish paint, so that will work especially well in the theater. And since I love how the primary bedroom turned out so much, I wanted to colorwash the walls, ceiling, doors, and trim in this room as well.

Stunning!

I color-matched Farrow & Ball’s Hague Blue and got to Sherwin Williams’ Sea Serpent, and it is … dark:

(Those are my painting socks!) I was nervous at this point that I had perhaps overcommitted, and somewhat couldn’t remember why I felt it necessary to go this dark when like, a medium-tone in a flat finish probably would have been fine.

But, the paint’s already paid for so it’s going up.

And now I’m really nervous … look how dark it is!

But meanwhile, I had purchased a bunch of acoustic panels during Prime Day, so time to unsquish them all from their packaging and let them acclimate overnight –

And then the next day my little sister showed up and assured me that the paint was fine and it would look good in the end, so I kept going with that while she started spray-gluing acoustic panels to the wall –

[0.3 seconds later …]

She used up all the glue that I thought would last us the whole wall, so a quick trip to Home Depot and many additional cans later, back in business –

I love how terrible paint looks when it’s only half-done!!

It makes it even more beautiful when it’s all finished, with two coats, a couple new doorknobs, and some solid JJ Abrams / JWST -style lens flares for dramatic effect:

Truly could not be happier with the finished result:

It’s a bold move painting everything super dark and gluing foam to the wall, but even for resale purposes this could still be an extra bedroom, a podcast studio, a separate office, a place for band practice, etc. Or ya know, a theater room.

So anyway, there was apparently a sale on white chairs, so for the moment that’s what’s down there:

But most importantly, here’s the view!

It’s really, really cool – and I pass it on my to/from my office so I always look in there and have something to look forward to!

(And yes, I know I need a popcorn machine 🍿)

Debits!

Pretty cheap on this one again – $248 for two more cans of paint, acoustic paneling, and lots of glue! Budget remaining (out of $50,000): $41,026

Thanks for reading!