The Basement

This past winter, Chuck started the project of finishing our basement. He loves having a project and this was the next big one on our wish list of To-Dos.

I can’t believe I haven’t done a post about the basement yet. I have tossed in a couple pictures here and there, but I am long overdue to tell you what’s been going on down there.

Here is a picture of the floor plan for the basement. The space on the right is unfinished, utility room/storage space. The large section on the bottom right will be the family room. There’s a bathroom and then a bedroom with a large closet at the top of the picture.

First, HERE is the gallery on Facebook with all of the photos we have taken. (Obviously, there are more than this, but these are the good ones.)

It took us quite a while to clear out the space. But once it was cleared out, Chuck built a ramp to get the wood down to the basement.

Then, like most suburban people, Chuck took the snow blower to the yard and cleared a path to get the wood to the basement window.

Once the wood was downstairs (this was only the first half of it), Chuck started framing the walls

We hired a company to spray insulation on the exterior walls. I thought it was pretty cool when it was all done!

The spot for the shower in the basement wasn’t flat, so Chuck needed to cut out a portion of the floor and put down new concrete to make it level.

We filled in the interior walls with insulation for a sound barrier in the rooms. Not so much for heat since Chuck gave the basement it’s own heating zone so it can be controlled on its own.

We had some storage shelves in the back corner of the basement (which is now the bedroom closet. Well, since we needed to work in there, the shelves needed to be moved. So Chuck made them a bit narrower to fit into another space. They worked out great there. (Granted, it doesn’t look this clean anymore since we have lots of other stuff piled in front of it right now.)

Here’s a view standing in the bedroom looking at the stairs into the family room. This was just before we had the drywall installed.

Here is the bedroom after the drywall went up. The guys hung all the drywall and had the first coat of mud up on the first day. I was very impressed.

Here’s a view of the family room. The boarded up window is the same one we had the ramp through for the wood. We ended up taking out that window (and have a new one to replace it with at the end of the project) and needed to keep out the snow/rain so the board has stayed there for now.

The view of the rest of the family room looking straight into the bathroom with the bedroom to the left and the stairs and utility/storage room on the right.

Here’s the same view with the grey painted in the bathroom, the first coat of yellow in the stairway, and Chuck had rolled the first coat of green downstairs. Later that night I went down and did the trim while he rolled the first coat of blue in the bedroom.

*Update* I forgot to mention that my mom came over to help me paint. She did the first coat in the stairs and helped get the second coat of green done. And I am already bribing her to come over and help finish up the stairway.

These are the cabinets for the basement. We plan to mount a TV above this row of cabinets. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

We also have the tile done in the bathroom, all the outlets finished, the lights and vents completed, the cabinet, shower, and toilet installed in the bathroom, and all the painting done except for one more coat in the stairs (which I am dreading because I hate ladders…my mom did the first coat for me).

What’s left? Well, we picked out a shower door, but while we were loading it into the car, the bag of screws fell out along with a bunch of loose screws, so we returned that and still need to pick up another one. We also need to get the trim and stain it all then hang it. We have the doors and those need to be installed. And we also need to pick out flooring and get that installed.

It’s really coming along. I can’t believe how close we are to having it finished! It’s going to be such a great addition. My plan is to take back my dining room. Not because we eat in there often, but because it is currently my playroom and it will be nice to not have toys all over the main floor. The bedroom in the basement will be the new playroom and hold the toys. I am so excited to have them all in the basement and not feel like I need to have them picked up all the time. And I can’t wait to wait movies down there with the girls! It’s so fun to see the end in sight!

In full disclosure, I said “we” many times in this post, but nothing was really “we”. Chuck did it all. We did hire companies for the spraying of the insulation and the drywall to be done. Literally, my only contribution has been painting. I did help pick things out, but Chuck has been the amazingly dedicated and hard working, one man show in the basement. And he does all this after he gets home from work and on the weekends. Wow. I married one great guy!

So there you have it. That’s where we are in the basement project. We are hoping to be done fairly soon because we have other projects outside that we want to get started on before too long here.

Do you have any projects going on in your house? Anything as big as what we have going on? Any future plans for projects?