‘My Basement's Flooded with Excess Furniture!' makeovers

Most homes in California don’t have basements, much less a nicely finished one like the one with which this particular client was blessed. Having a tiled, freshly painted, functional basement adds value to any home, and was a real plus for my client’s hillside house. When you’re selling your home, you need to show potential buyers how they might use the space. You can set it up as a family room, exercise zone, workshop or extra bedroom, but you absolutely can’t show your basement filled with junk! All the furniture that didn’t work upstairs had been stashed in my client’s spacious basement. An old kitchen table and chair, an accent chair, a console table and a desk were placed at random. What is this room? Is it an office? A storage room? Our challenge was to take what had been an excess furniture storage space and transform it into a useable room. We needed to create a clear use and give it decorative cohesion so that buyers could see its potential. We could only use what was on hand, as my client did not want to rent or buy any furniture. Before: • Odds and ends of furniture filled the space and weren’t set up in a useful way. We needed to give the room a purpose. • There were four different styles of furniture creating a choppy look. The room will look more pulled together and cohesive when we limit the variety of styles. • There weren’t any accessories. A sterile-looking space is a turn-off to potential buyers. We needed to add a few items for warmth and personality. After: • As the homeowner had already set up a computer and stored some important papers in the desk, we decided to create a home office. We removed the old kitchen table, dog bed and side chair. We placed the desk on the long wall as you entered the room, so buyers could immediately figure out “this is a home office.” • Every piece of furniture was in a different style, so we decided to create zones of similar styles. The desk had a Shaker, garden inspired quality and the console table had a more refined romantic look, also with garden accents. We built vignettes around the style of these two pieces of furniture. • We went on a treasure hunt throughout the house looking for accessories that would meld with our two zones. We hung a mirror over the desk, making it look like the room had a window. We found artwork and silk plants to add to the garden theme. Voila! The basement has been converted from a storage vault to a charming home office.