The Basement Project: Tour

We've been itching to work on our outdated, semi-functional basement for a while now. Like practically since we moved in.

There's a lot of space. The entire footprint of our main floor is down there, and 3/4 of it is finished. So that's always been really nice.

However, in no way did we ever want to go down there.

The problems:
1. Lighting. Dim/broken florescent tubes behind dirty sheets of plastic.

2. Flooring. Stick-on tiles that had lost their stick.

3. Walls. Lots of fake wood paneling. Yuck.

4. Ceiling. A drop ceiling with old, stained panels. And a dark brown metal grid. Awesome. Oh, and since a water pipe to the outside burst last year, we'd lost a few panels to water damage.

5. Filled with junk. As seen in picture #1. Some of our own, some left behind by the previous owners. Lovely.

We set out to tackle each of these problems. On a budget, of course. And we'll cover the various aspects of the remodel in subsequent posts.

But first, let me take you on a little "before" tour. Squint your eyes and think about what could be.

First, you walk down the stairs. Steep ones! You a little taste of paneling and ugly lighting on your way down.

Turn right. You're in the biggest of the three finished rooms. Someday we'll put a couch and a bunch of toys down here.

Walk into the room and to the right, past the wrapping paper, and you'll see a door to the little half bath.

Walk back into the playroom, and you'll find a door to the unfinished room. Yay, storage! This one isn't changing much. Save adding some of our storage stuff from the other 3 rooms. You know... suitcases, Christmas decorations, half-used paint cans, sentimental wedding paraphernalia, etc.

If you head back to the bottom of the stairs, and turn left (instead of right) you'll find yourself here:

We're not sure what we'll do with that space. If we're here long enough, maybe will spring for a ping pong table? We'll see.

And then if you walk through the ping pong room, you'll find finished room #3. This picture was taken when we toured the house for the first time. Apparently the previous owner used it as putting practice. We'd like to find some used exercise equipment and put it in there.

If you walked through the exercise room and opened the far door, you'd find yourself back in the unfinished space. Clear as mud? Good.