Now the current state of affairs:
First up went the lights. Originally there was a junction box in the center of the ceiling, but in adding a light we discovered that you could only turn it on and off from the breaker (and if you did that 1/2 the house went dark too). All that came out, we added the 2 par cans and the 5 puck lights (Which will be mounted to the ceiling once it's textured and painted). The puck lights will eventually light a book case in the recessed area. Then came patching all the drywall that had to come out to wire in the new lights. It's not yet 100% perfect, but a little more work and I'll be happy. What should have happened was those pieces of sheet rock that had to be cut into should have all been removed and new put in. Being on such a tight budget, we chose to patch what we had cut. It's taking a lot more work, and I'm having nightmares about being forced to hold my arms over my head, but I think the end results will be good.
Once all the new lights were in place, we ran the wiring to the switches. The pars are on a great normal sized switch with a dimmer, the pucks on another switch and this great stairwell light on the third. Eric wanted to make it so that the stairwell light automatically came on when the overhead lights were off. I'm not sure why we didn't do it that way but I think it was fear of the light being in our eyes when we were trying to watch TV. Then he wanted to put a secondary switch into the laundry room to be able to turn off the light if it ever bothered us, but then we laughed about the next owners living here for years before figuring out what that switch did.
Next we build this soffit. The one on the top was already there to contain the HVAC duct work and in order to make this room not seem so odd, despite Erics warning. I had to have a matching one on the bottom to cover the foundation and to hold up the FANTASTIC build in that will be there...eventually. I now regret making it the full 14.5" deep, but hindsight is 20/20 and I was told so. Now it's going to be a great place to run our wiring for the rest of the house
The other side of the room got the same treatment to cover the foundation. This side is much more shallow 3" or so I think. This room is staying much warmer because of the insulation we tucked up inside the soffits. I never realized how much heat we were loosing through that concrete.
While I've been wasting away with my arms over my head patching drywall, Eric built this really cool arch so the entry matches the rest of the arched doorways in the house. He's not quite happy with it yet and has come up with a few design modifications, but I'm positive it will turn out beautifully.
Lastly the upper part of the walls has been textured. We've tried to match the texture to the rest of the house. It has a really cool swirly pattern to it. I don't think it's a perfect match, but it's pretty close. Next the ceiling will be textured and then it's decoratin' time (I'm so excited)
We've decided to make the theme for the house "Bringing the outside in" I had totally different plans for this room, with white bead-board and navy walls, but once I discovered the price of bead-board and talked to Eric a little more about it, I think the design will come together quite nicely. We're going to do this grasscloth wallpaper on the lower half of the walls and continue it in interesting ways through out the rest of the house like this cool ">diamond pattern. I'm sure we'll come up with some more interesting ways to continue the theme. There was a pretty cool wallpaper at lowes that looked like bark that I'm curious about, and we'd really like to use natural stone tiles (if cost doesn't prohibit).
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