Interior Design- RecRoom and Hall: Sunnybrook Farm

The rec room -- a place for friends to gather.

The ground floor is always the busiest place in the house. The work rooms are here, all deliveries come through the ground entrance, and the children enter here after school, drop their books and head into the kitchen for home-baked munchies.

Floor plan of ground level:

Discussing the starred rooms.

The rooms we will discuss today have the red stars.

The ground level has 9 inch ceilings. The previous post Kitchen, Larder, and Wine Cellar started the ground floor chronicles. This post describes the hall and the rec room.

The Hallway:

Jeremy and Bertie have after school snacks.

The hall is 9 x 24 inches and runs front to back with exterior doors, and a staircase to the foyer. The staircase is the Classic #7000 from HBS.

The hall is in the process of an update. I guess because of all the use it gets from the little people it is looking its age, and is in need of a repainting. Also it had an electrical problem.

The flooring is slate made from a vinyl self-stick shelving paper. I glued the vinyl onto poster board in 12-inch squares, cut them into 1-inch squares, glued the squares onto a poster board floor template, and then glued the template in place. The slate was then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane. The staircase was placed on top of the slates. The Rowbottoms had the back of the staircase left open for storage of oddly-shaped items, for instance bicycles!

The walls are painted white and any stained woodwork was done with MinWax Colonial Maple and then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane. We added some comfy furniture, storage units, items coming and going, and a large table always set with food so that one could eat in peace and avoid the heat and bustle in the kitchen. This place is user and dog friendly.

 --Electricity: Oh, Thomas Edison:
The electricity enters the ground floor from outside and through the rec room (right) and into the hall to the back. There are two tape wire branches crossing the hall under the slate to light the rooms on the left. Somehow one of the tape wires got damaged and no longer lit the kitchen. I had to carefully tear up a six-inch portion of the slate. I cut the tape wire to make sure it stayed “broken”. Then I used lamp wire and bradded it into the tape wire on the right wall, laid it along the floor and bradded it into the tape wire on the left wall—et voila-- lights in the kitchen! I then replaced the slate, putting the wire under it, and tacked in down lightly in case I have to fix any more problems.

The ground floor was the first floor we wired and it has always been problematic as to which lights “light”. Also, I am using some “pound-in” lights. Well, they don’t pound in easily, some not all all, and then they fall out! Even if they stay in, they may not light.

Pound-in lights.

The Rec room:


A nicely set up rec room.

The rec room is 20 x 13 inches.

This room is entered though stained glass swinging doors. The stained glass is commercial "stained glass" printed on velum that my sister found somewhere. The doors are stained with MinWax Colonial Maple and then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane.

Swinging stained glass doors.

The walls are painted white above, and wallpapered below with MiniGraphics “Jake”, as is the bar. The swag lamps are from HBS and the pool table light from DHE.

The flooring is a wood parquet made from a vinyl self-stick shelf paper. I glued the vinyl onto poster board in 12-inch squares, cut that into wood strips, and then glued these directly onto the plywood floor with Elmer’s glue. The flooring was then sealed with two coats of MinWax clear gloss polyurethane. I used these strips for the baseboard and the chair rail, also.


Parquet flooring

This room has all the proper things: a well-stocked bar, a large cooler for soft drinks, a complete audio-visual system, an upright piano, a pool table, the requisite dart board, two cigar store Indians, and food. Festive posters line the walls.

Dart board -- spectators stand clear!



Cigar store Indian

The bar is a pine armoire, turned on its side, with some pieces removed and some added!

A bashed cheap, pine amoire becomes the perfect bar.

Thus ends today's visit with the Rowbottoms.

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 The Housekeeper’s suite will be discussed in the next post ... I hope. Some of this is v-e-r-y slow going.