Welcome again, my friends, as we take one step closer to creating a masterpiece. I’m in the process of creating my very own comic cave, and I need your help in decorating!
Last time I showed you all what my current situation has been over the course of the last 10 or so years. It’s time for my comics to come out of the closet, as it were.
We are one week away from officially closing on the house, and since it’s sitting empty, our realtor has allowed us to go in as much as we want, and has given us permission to get some things prepped beforehand so we can hit the ground running when we buy it. So yesterday, my wife and I went over to do some heavy-duty cleaning.
The house has been sitting empty for about a year and a half, so there is a lot of grunge to clean up. My job was to get on a ladder and dust the beams in the kitchen. It was pretty disgusting work, and I’m not exactly sure how much I really accomplished, but at the end of the day, I could really tell a difference.
My other goal of the day was to get exact measurements of the comic cave, as many of you have asked what size room we’re talking about here. It is an odd-shaped room, and obviously not an original room to the house. At some point, the upstairs was divided up into a number of rooms of various shapes and designs. But part of why I think this room will make a good comic cave is because of the odd shape.
The entire length of the room is 18 feet, but it has two main sections. The larger section is 8 x 11 feet and the smaller section is 6 1/2 x 7 1/2 feet. There’s also a closet that’s 3 1/2 x 5 1/2. Here’s a sketch of the layout of the room.
Last week, I asked for your flooring suggestions. I got a lot of great responses, and the overwhelming majority suggested hardwood floors. They are easier to clean and I wouldn’t have to worry about fuzz balls getting on the tape on the back of my comic sleeves. We have been trying to get estimates about the flooring and have gotten little response, which I think is strange considering my assumption that in this economic down-turn, all builders and contractors are starving for work. We’ve only had one guy come out and measure the floors, and he was not very helpful. I don’t think we’ll be using him. We’re waiting to hear from another guy, but I guess with the snow down here, everything has closed down.
My wife and I discussed flooring and while we both want hardwood floors everywhere, we’re really limited by our finances. The downstairs has heart pine under the nasty carpet, which we are going to have sanded and refinished. But upstairs is just carpeted with plywood underneath. So we’d have to have hardwood installed upstairs and we just can’t afford that right now. I lost the battle in suggesting that we put hardwood in solely my room and not the others. So for now, we’re going carpet in the comic cave, which was the second choice from all of you.
Now we have to decide on paint. I was thinking about basing the color of the room around my chair, since it’s the only piece of furniture with a color scheme. A few of my buddies over at Comic Collector Live reminded me of a room that we were all drooling over a while back, which has a nice goldenrod type of color in it. That room can be found here.
I also wonder about the reddish-orange color in the chair and what that might look like in the space. I like bold colors, especially for a dynamic comic cave.
Or I guess we could go in a completely different direction and go deep blue or hunter green or something. What do you think? Vote in the poll below and give me your opinions!
The next week or two will be crazy, as we’ll be closing on the house on February 19, then immediately getting the carpet up, followed by replacing some downstairs windows, painting everything, then having the floors redone. Thank you all for your help, and see you next week!
Next week: Ripping Up Carpet!
Jeff Jackson
jeff@comicattack.net
Oh, that is a LOT bigger than it looked before! I didn’t know it opened up more and twisted around like that; couldn’t see that from the initial picture from the doorway.
The carpet there doesn’t look too thick, so I doubt you’ll have many problems with it sticking to things. Just be sure that, if you’re putting shelving in, you leave space to tear up the carpet later.
That carpet isn’t staying. We’re getting new carpet. That stuff is like this industrial kind of stuff. I think the last owners were hoping that the house would be bought by some kind of business.
It’s a really nice sized room, and that’s why I wanted to show the measurements. There’s not a good angle to get a picture of the whole room.
If I was you I’d check some of the damaged and thrift stores for wood flooring as in the damaged you can get really good deals on hardwood flooring alot of times as much as 75% off retail just becuase a piece or 2 got damaged.you can get the wood flooring the prefinished types alot cheaper than carpet.
That sucks you can’t get the hardwood flooring in! I’d go the linoleum route then instead of carpet. Carpet is just…bleh.
As for the color of paint, I voted other with Bright Orange + Vibrant Blue. I think those two colors look kick ass together and really pop, adding to the exciting feel of the room!
The only thing with the color is that if you’re going in to relax and read then you don’t want loud, vibrant, colors, you should go with something in the medium to soft range.
I agree with Speech. Don’t go too loud with your colors. Something a little more muted would be better.
Good points, Speech. I like bright, but not so bold that it hurts your eyes.
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Hey folks! We closed on the house today! Whoo-hoo! And I chose a paint color for the room. I heeded the words of Infinite Speech and didn’t get something so loud that it would give me headaches. Rather, I went with a color called “Suntan Yellow” which I will post about soon. I also didn’t quite get to ripping up carpet yet, but when I do, you’ll know!