• Cherie Barber
• February 11, 2023
• 36 Comments

From Dungeon To Designer

Howdy,

The second episode of Channel 9’s Space Invaders aired last night, and for those who missed it, I was tasked with the job of converting a grungy, uninspiring downstairs rumpus room into a practical & useable space for single mum Jill & her 2 daughters (both on the autism spectrum) to enjoy.

Having a spare room in your home can be either a godsend or a curse, depending on how you use the room. In Jill’s case, it had become a dumping ground for all sorts of weird & wonderful stuff – kid’s toys, furniture, bric-a-brac & a lot of her former husband’s belongings which hadn’t yet been removed from the home. The result? A room that was completely unusable, dark, dowdy & drab.

Whilst Jill & the girls have their own bedrooms & there was a living room upstairs, this small family of 3 wanted a relaxing space where they could all come together in the one room, but still have enough space where they could do their own, individual activities. For train driver mum Jill, that simply meant a place to sit & unwind in front of a fire & TV at the end of each day. For the 2 girls, an arts & crafts area to pursue creative activities, music area & the youngest Ruby needing an autism exercise space.

If we look at what my brief essentially was – it was to turn this dungeon-like room into a relaxation zone, arts, craft, music zone & exercise area, all rolled into the one room. Far out! Add to that, the extra complication of having to create substantially more storage in the room for all the items to be neatly tucked away behind closed doors, that the family were keeping. Did I forget to mention … there’s a piano buried under all that clutter & barely noticeable in the before photos. Instructions from the homeowners: it has to stay!

Rumpus Room Before – A dumping ground for all the things we’re guilt of collecting in our lives.

Rumpus Room Before – The clutter was so extreme, it almost reached the ceiling!

WHERE TO START

In every renovation for Space Invaders, the first task is to box all the clutter up & take it to a nearby hall for the brilliantly talented, Peter Walsh to work his magic. All up, 227 boxes came out of this one single room. Mind-blowing but true! Whilst everything was being packed up, the lovely Angie Kent rummaged through the clutter to find treasures or anything that could be potentially upcycled. Once the room was emptied, I set to work, assessing the full size & scale of the room (roughly 8 metres long x 4 metres wide & 5.8m wide in the alcove area), its condition & any obtrusions I had to deal with.

With the room now emptied, the first thing that hit me was the old carpet – dirty & well past its use by date. The smartest way to make this room appear larger was to ditch the carpet & install floating floorboards instead. Being a lower floor level, I wanted a water resistant hybrid floorboard so naturally choose the Merseyside Classic range from Flooring Xtra in Spotted Gum colour.

Rumpus Room Before: The old carpet had seen better days.

Rumpus Room After: New hybrid floating floorboards in spotted gum colour.

Now, let’s turn our attention to that hideous ceiling. Textured concrete may have been at the height of fashion in the 1970’s but it ain’t that great now. Together with the patterned cornice, it really makes the room scream “renovate me”. I got my carpenters to remove the patterned cornice however this took WAY longer than expected. What should have ordinarily been a 30-minute job, turned into a 5-hour, filthy task, thanks to those cornices wanting to stay put. Straight off the bat, my construction schedule blew out by more than half a day & when you’ve only got 2 long days to renovate & style the space, that puts pressure on everyone involved. Some things in renovating you just can’t predict but we soldiered on in good spirits …

Rumpus Room Before: The ornate cornices gave the room a tacky, dated look.

CEILING CONUMDRUMS

With the cornices now finally off, it was time to install 92mm x 18mm treated pine, laid flat against the ceiling, to where the old cornices used to be. This is a more modern day take on the traditional cove style cornices. The textured concrete ceiling had to stay & together with the new cornices, were painted in 2 coats of Taubmans Endure Ceiling paint in standard white. Just painting the ceiling & cornices instantly made the room look sooooo much better.

Before – Traditional, cove style cornices.

After – 92 x 18mm treated pine, laid flat against the ceiling becomes a modern-day cornice.

WONDERFUL WALLS

The walls in this room were thankfully in decent condition, albeit, just a little bit bare. I could have easily just painted them all up but I wanted the room to look more visually interesting by adding more texture to it. We removed the green picture rail running all around the room as it was a strange addition for a home that wasn’t heritage in any way. We then installed one of my favourite go-to-products, VJ wall cladding to most of the walls. That meant the walls had to have timber battens installed first which becomes a more difficult job when you’re screwing those into concrete walls. This took 2 carpenters one whole day to complete but was definitely worth it.

New skirting boards & architraves were installed over the top of the VJ wall cladding & a new barn door added to replace the old, standard laundry door that was in the room previously. Once all the timber work was complete, my painters jumped straight in, painting the walls in the beautiful calming colour of Taubmans Beige Drop which contrasts nicely with the Taubmans Crisp White trims everywhere else.

STREAMLINED STORAGE

Like every Space Invaders renovation, the most important thing is the addition of new storage options. With window & door obtrusions scattered everywhere & the room being only 4.1 metres in depth, I decided it was best to install storage cabinets on one wall only, to free up as much floor space as possible. With only 2 days to do this renovation, the luxury of custom-built cabinetry wasn’t an option or even needed. Instead, I used Kaboodle ready-made cabinets, straight off the shelf from Bunnings to create the look of bespoke built-ins.(Remember: if you join my Home SuperSaver group, you’ll get a big discount off these). The simple addition of these, mean this young family now have 2.5 metres of practical storage on both sides of the fireplace. There’s plenty of room now for everything to be tucked neatly away out of sight.

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

With a “fireplace” on Jill’s wish list, I decided to make this the focal point of the room. I purchased a plug in, no flue required, electric fireplace which was perfect for this house being a 2 storey home with no chance of getting a flue installed overhead. Electric fireplaces only heat up 1 room unlike gas or wood fire versions which can heat up your whole home. This meant I could safely hang a new TV above it, without any concerns about fire safety. I continued the VJ cladding on the fireplace wall, installed oak shelving overhead & installed a beautiful self-adhesive wallpaper from Luxe Walls that adds a pop of colour & pattern to the space, without being overbearing. What’s also important to note is the colours in this room had to be on the more neutral side to not stimulate the girl’s autism.

DIVIDING THE ROOM INTO ZONES

When a room has to serve multiple purposes, it’s important to create defined zones to give each of the areas a purpose. My favourite way to create zones in an open plan space is by using rugs. In the relaxation zone where the sofas are located, I used this large rug from Fantastic Furniture to section off the sitting area. This really helped to define it as a place to chill out, read a book or watch TV. By arranging the furniture in a U-shape format around the fireplace, I was able to keep the space cosy without making the room feel smaller.

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

For the girls arts & crafts area, I created a 2 person arts & crafts desk & storage area, simply by buying 4 x Fantastic Furniture bookcases, screwing them together & installing 2 Trademaster Oiled Oil benchtops straight on top. A job for your carpenter!

As for young Ruby’s autism exercise area, a ballet bar (her favourite) was installed on one wall with an exercise mat on the floor that tucked neatly in the small alcove area.

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

LIGHTING UP THEIR LIVES

One of the biggest reasons this room looked so drab before was because of its poor lighting. The old concrete ceiling made it extremely difficult, almost impossible, to get a bank of new LED downlights in so instead, I opted for 2 big dramatic LED ceiling pendant lights from Beacon Lighting which contained 8 spotlights. This style of light enabled me to direct bursts of light into the areas of the room that really needed it most.

THE FINISHING TOUCHES

What brings a room to life is the property styling which all of our homeowners get to keep. As I’m always renovating on a budget, I sourced all the big pieces of furniture including the gorgeous Bayton 3 Seater Sofa from Fantastic Furniture. Most of the soft furnishings such as the fringed pink cushion, throws & decorator accessories, came from Kmart. All of these new pieces are now mixed in with the homeowners’ pieces they decided to keep, in a more tasteful way. The freshly upcycled piano slotted nicely on 1 wall with family photos mounted overhead.

Last but not least, those old window furnishings had to go. The fabric pelmets that were in the room previously were dated & bulky, plus they didn’t provide any real functionality. Instead, I got Wynstan Blinds to install these cute pink roller blinds to keep the light out & some dark sheers to add privacy without totally blocking out the light.I opted for darker curtains so they tied in cohesively with the black TV screen & those big black pendant lights!

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

Slide the arrow left & right to see the whole before & after image.

All up, this renovation cost $38,685.69 for all the materials, labour, new furniture & styling items at full retail cost. Of this, materials accounted for $26,544.83 & labour at $12,140.86. The uplift in the property value was a staggering $130,000, resulting in a net profit of $91,314.31 for these deserving homeowners.

This renovation goes to show the power of renovating just one room in your home well & that rooms can successfully serve more than one purpose. While some stranger things needed to go into the room, with a bit of quick but thoughtful planning, all was possible in the end. Tune in at 7:30pm on Channel 9 next Saturday for Episode 3, a games room & garage renovation!

As always, if you have any questions on this episode, be sure to ask them below & my team or I will answer them for you. Until next week…..

 

Much love,

Cherie x