The children’s rules are thus:  your bedroom is for sleeping, dressing, and reading; the common rooms of the house are for civilized activities such as eating, reading, conversation, and quiet games-playing; and the basement, being lined with concrete, is the play zone—play, play, PLAY….  For the past ten years, these house rules have been successful—our home surviving unscathed, our basement sufficiently abused.    Now the children are in their “tween” years, so we upgraded a storage space into a “tween” room.  With paint, laminates, and wire, we created a retro pad for homework and hanging out.

Concrete floors and overhead beams dominate out little 10’ x 12’.   Paint would handle the concrete, but what to do about the beams.  The dark brown 3” x 9” beams are original to the 1890’s house frame.  Since we needed a sound barrier and insulation, we went ahead with the installation of Sonopan acoustical panels followed by a thick layer of blue Styrofoam insulation (wording side up).  Looking up, the contrast of light blue foam to brown wood inspired the rest of the room…pale retro hard surfaces (floors, walls, laminates) with high contrast furniture, artwork, and technology.  To distract from the “basement” feeling, we installed heavy-duty ½-inch square mesh the bottom of the wood beams.  This “ceiling” stops the eye from looking up between the beams.  It also creates a silvery sheen and adds to the retro techno atmosphere.  The unfinished paneling was painted a pale silvery blue “iceberg” from Benjamin Moore (BM).  The concrete was prepped with BM M-85 (ask your hardware store), and then painted “showroom white,” a pale beige with a hint of blue, from the BM floor enamels collection.  This beige with blue contrasts nicely with the walls and connects well with the two adjoining rooms:  the laundry room with blue-beige tiles and the hallway with blue-beige commercial carpet.  The laminate for the desk surface and TV shelf also needs to “connect” with the other rooms, so I copied the laundry room laminate--Pionite white jaguar AW775.  It has an off-white background with tiny slate grey jaguar spots that hide dirt smudges.  Overall, the room is a silvery blend of blue and beige, topped off with a new TV monitor in the now de rigueur silver—it takes one back to the ‘80’s, eh?  With the surfaces ready, I now needed my little clients’ input.  The Tweens need to see their colours emphasized to make the room “theirs”, and I need to use my colours in the background to make the “tone” of the room “ours”.  I asked them what colours they would like to see in the room.  She said blue.  He said red.  I said perfect! 

His red and her blue are featured in the softer surfaces and the “artwork”.  For instance, the carpet is a wild pattern called Pinball.  It’s an indestructible commercial nylon carpet that is made for bowling alleys.  The pattern features 5” long markings that resemble stylized pinball machines in various hot colours, namely electric red, orange, blue.  The loveseat and chair are cerulean blue ultra-suede with red ultra-suede piping.  Old posters featuring the same colours are framed for the walls.  And did I mention that even their iMacs are cerulean blue? 

Colour harmony in my home means family harmony.