Hawthorne Beige is a highly-saturated (dark) neutral. Casey

Red and green are complementary colors, so I think with the right shade of green, it would look great with the fireplace. I like the celery green pictured above. Don't know if you've thought about lighting, but several florescent or LED fixtures, with color corrected bulbs, would really brighten up your space. We had our offices down in the basement in our previous home and without those lights, it would have been a dreary, depressing place to work. With the lights, it was as bright as our west facing rooms upstairs with windows. We didn't notice that there were no windows. If you do decide to add additional lighting, you might want to do your painting afterward because the colors are going to appear very different with and without lighting.

AH! "Club Cave" -- a hot music venue design ..... How about breaking the wall space up into sections -- and paint one wall in black -- and then add painted squares of red/orange to a white wall or two? Add basic white build-it-yourself shelving from Target or Walmart to hold their "stuff" And the bright white will help to lighten up the area too! Add several cork bulletin boards to each wall -- to display their posters etc. AND help to muffle noise too! Check out Craigs List listings in your area for a couple of chairs. Or add beanbag chairs! Jan at Rosemary Cottage

Maybe a wine cellar. That's all I can think of. I can't be sure from the photo, but it looks at first glance as if someone has tried to defeat leakage with patching cement. That helps when water is pouring in through actual holes in the block. Who knows, maybe it was. Block is porous, though, and any time water collects around the foundation it will seep in. First thing to do is make sure your rain gutters and downspouts are clear and drain well away from the foundation. If the ground doesn't slope away from the foundation, make it so. These two fixes help or cure many cases. Not enough? Check whether you have footer drains and, if you do, make sure they are clear. Usually when you have footer drains, they drain into a sump. Some older (but not what I call old) houses have footer tiles that drain into the sanitary sewer. I don't know of any place where that's now permitted, for good reasons, but I may have missed some. If you have a setup like that, you probably don't want to advertise the fact. If you have no footer drains, and gutters-downspouts-drainage don't do the job well enough, then you may have to add footer drains. This involves digging down around the outside of the foundation. Typically you also apply sealer and an impermeable membrane to the block from the outside at the same time. It's expensive, but it's usually a long term sure fix. Once you've stopped the seepage, you can clean and paint. Wear protective gear. Especially if you have children, a lead test isn't a bad idea, so you know what you're dealing with and can take proper precautions if necessary.