Home Makeover Interior designing and decoration tips

This balance keeps the room bright without turning it into a fruit bowl. The whole room gets a lift and, hopefully, everyone who enters gets a lift, too. I definitely had fun with the design, and the kids seemed to get into the fun aspect right away. I’ll never forget the look on their faces when we opened the doors and let them in. “Ty, thank you so much!” “This is awesome!” The other entertainment room shown on these pages was for an organization called Colorado Home- less Families. It’s a great group that helps people get back on their feet. They already had a community center in place, but it was all white inside with little (make that no) personality. It needed color and lots of it. This room serves several purposes.
It’s a place for families to watch movies and TV; for kids to play games, do homework and art projects; and for adults to use computers to look for jobs. So there’s a lot going on, but color ties it all together. The “viewing” area, for instance, has a traditional arrangement of furniture (sofa, chair, coffee table), but the upholstered furnishings are bright, cheery, and covered with vibrant patterned pillows. The computer tables and chairs are made from simple plywood, but they too have a little color. We used a technique that involves using oil-based paint as a stain so that you still see the grain of the wood, but it has a pink or yellow or orange cast. It’s actually very easy. All you do is thin the paint with paint thinner, brush it on the wood, and then wipe it off with a cloth.
The stain penetrates the wood and tints the grain. The walls of this room are all about color, too. The mural I used here, though, lacks the symmetry oil-based paint was thinned, brushed on, and then wiped off to stain these simple chairs and desks. You usually find in rooms with motifs on the walls. And yet it works because the ’60s-ish effusion of multihued circles, flowers, and the face of a young girl (all sort of a throwback to the Summer of Love) lends itself to randomness.