Breathing new life into a dead room

DISCLAIMER: This was not done with any interior design education, so I know it's not great and I would have done a few things different if I knew then what I know now.

Okay, so this is a project that I "designed" and my sister financed.  Let me give you a back story:

This is the pool house at my parents' home in Virginia.  Over the last four years, my parents had someone living in there who severely damaged it (to what my parents thought was beyond repair).  There was HEAVY smoke damage and a large dog chewed the furniture and draperies off the door. I really wish I had before photos to reiterate how truly disgusting this room was. Imagine this- cobwebs everywhere (I even found a black widow when moving the loveseat out!), dog hair everywhere, dark yellow walls that were once pastel yellow, and off-white trim that was once bright white.

To surprise my mom for Mothers Day, my sister and I decided to redo this room so my parents could actually use it again.  In the past they had parties and the pool house was really instrumental in hosting everyone.

Once a year my mom travels to a tropical island with her friends and would move anywhere tropical and south of the U.S. in a heartbeat, so I wanted to bring a tropical feeling to the pool house.

So, since I can't draw (at all!) I used my Sims3 game to map out what I wanted to do.  There aren't a ton of options as far as furniture goes but you can customize the colors to your liking and the furniture they do have gets the point across well enough.

Another Sims3 picture looking into the pool house from the angle of the pool

And this is the pool house now, not exactly like the Sims3 pictures but it's definitely what I wanted!  I love the colors of the walls.  It's Benjamin Moore's "Un-Teal We Meet Again" (LOVE the name!).  The coral color is a good complimentary color to the blue.  I ordered the barstools unfinished and painted and stained them to my liking (it saved about $50).  The coral fish on the wall is actually a chalkboard and I thought that it would be fun to have around for parties!

These are the cabinets on the opposite side of the bar.  I really wanted to paint the base of the cabinet coral so that the doors would pop.  We ordered these knobs and each one has a different picture (I think the other two are a seahorse and a sea turtle).  If anyone knows where they came from feel free to comment, because I cannot remember.

The structural bring column in here sticks out into the room and I thought that it would be a nice touch to paint it coral as well, it's an unexpected pop of color.  PS that brick soaked up A LOT of paint! We already had the directors chair from Pier1 so we just bought the replacement pieces to better match.

Instead of spending a ton of money that we didn't have on artwork, these were painted Jackson Pollock style by yours truly.  I bought the cheapest canvases that Michael's had to offer and took them out into the yard and started slinging paint. I think they turned out really neat if I may say so myself!

My sister lives in NOVA so she was able to pop up to College Park and pick this up at Ikea.  Since this room is used for the pool area, I thought it was necessary to have a place to store towels and sunscreen.  The baskets and most of the decorations were found at Michael's.

I bought the palm tree at a yard sale for $45, which was a steal considering how well it is made and the fact that it has built-in string lights. The draperies came from Bed Bath and Beyond and the small rug came from Pier1.

All in all, I think that this turned out pretty well.  It was definitely better than before! It cost us about $600.

Approximate cost breakdown:
$250- paint and supplies (ceiling paint [1 gallon], wall paint [4 gallons], trim paint [1 gallon], stain, rollers, brushes, spackling, sandpaper) I think you get the picture.

$200- furniture (stools and shelves)

$150- decor (tree, curtains, odds and ends decorations, rug, knobs)

What helped a lot was making used of some of the older things we had.  Not top-notch design work here, but I think it turned out A-OKAY! Did I mention we did it all in 48 hours??!!