The Old Darkroom makeover

It's been probably about 5 years since I put away my darkroom equipment. At that point I had been digital for almost 6 years and no one was in need of prints from negatives I had in the files. So it was pretty safe. Closing the darkroom down was one of the most emotional things I'd done to date (sending my daughter to college is currently the most emotional...). Then a couple years ago I reopened it for Taylor and her friend and showed them how to develop film. Then it got put away again. While I really miss my darkroom time, life changes and I didn't enjoy it as much as time went on, as I had in high school and college and my early career. My darkroom was my domain, my private world.

So as it would  happen, we had flooding (again) in the basement in February. This time it flooded 4 times in 2 weeks. We had some ruined sheetrock and it got cut out of the wall. There went the "light-tightness". In recent years it was my scrapbook and art room anyway. But it's just kind of sad that even if I wanted to I couldn't use it for printing. Anyway, I decided it was time to ditch the flat dark charcoal paint that made it quite depressing to work in...rather dungeon like. It was time to make it a more visually inspiring place for creating art.

Not wanting to spend a ton of money on this remember, we are sending a kid to school soon and I see 4 years of eating Ramen noodles ahead. I found sky blue paint. That took care of 3 of the walls - barely. This weekend while my husband and daughter were away I decided to tackle the complicated task of painting the cinderblock wall with the pegboard and plumbing and the ceiling. I thought about just leaving it dark but it didn't look right. So on my way back from visiting a friend yesterday I hatched an idea. I bought a gallon of white and painted the wall and ceiling. I also bought those little sample tubs of paint which Justus Hardware had on sale in bright colors. Then I took my brush and just threw paint on the walls, ceiling...and me. It was one of the most liberating things I've ever done! I was singing at the top of my lungs to may favorite music, had some wine while keeping my friend entertained with text updates and just threw paint...laughing the whole time. What better way to decorate an art room! Here are some photos.


Before. I have 3 walls done. I was kind of not looking foward to dealing with the plumbing and guages on the sink (under the sheet to the right) and cinderblock in general.

You can see where sheetrock had been removed to allow access to kitchen plumbing work we did.

my thrown paint

The finished part of the wall over the sink. I painted the pipes different colors too.

What fun it was!

Now the task of putting everything back in the room in an organized manner!