renovation – Keeps on Ringing

In my last post [nearly two months ago…whoopsies] I introduced our basement renovation project. You might think that two months later we’d be done! Hahahaha…no.

Other than our kitchen renovation I think this is our biggest undertaking. It has been a massive and complex project to try to maximize our partial basement. When we first started talking about redoing it Andy wanted that home theater. I was more focused on storage and usability. As much as I hate doing laundry, the laundry room needed to be there too, and ideally be more functional. We also wanted to create an additional “hang out” space. Sound travels in our house due to the open floor plan and wood floors. So having a spot in the basement where our friends can hang out or in the future we can be and the kids can be sleeping upstairs was essential.

I touched upon the demolition in the last post. After we cleared out all the trash Andy got to work building out the walls to our new basement.

Here is coming down the stairs.

One of the challenges to most basements is they were created to be utilitarian. Meaning they often house your furnace, water heater, sump pump, etc. In order to disguise our sump pump Andy built a closet. You can see the door open below. We found a great deal on Angies List for a brand new sump pump. Now the sump pump will be easily accessible when we need to check it, but hidden from view. Perfect solution!

The other challenge was what to do with the laundry room. We decided that the space that the washer and dryer were in was not really going to be usable otherwise so we kept everything there. Andy built walls to enclose it. I was concerned about feeling claustrophobic so he left a very large opening and is planning on doing some kind of sliding door.

Tomorrow I’ll show you where we are today. Get ready, it’s a big jump!

Well hello there. I thought I had stopped blogging too.

Since I last wrote we have been busy with the usual life stuff, plus a little basement reno thrown in.

Ok, that’s a lie.

There is nothing little about this basement renovation.

Our house has a partial basement. It’s not huge, but we felt like we could do more with it than just laundry and storage. We’ve learned that when a room in our house has no real purpose we basically just throw junk in there. Which for someone who despises clutter is no good.

Enter into the dark wood-paneled basement.

Believe it or not this was relatively cleaned up.

The room was divided in two. Let’s pretend we are on HGTV’s Property Brothers. The right side is the “Wood Paneled Dungeon” and the right side is the “Laminate Nightmare Laundry Room.”

I don’t really want to know what the previous owners did in their basement that required the walls to be completely impermeable and wipe-off-able. I will say I greatly appreciated having that giant washtub during our many renovations. The fridge was original to the house.

Andy invited his buddies over and in a few hours they managed to demo the whole thing. Bazinga!

Generally we just get rid of the renovation trash one bag at a time in our normal trash, as per our town’s waste management rules. However, this renovation required something a little more serious. Enter the Bagster.We totally recommend the Bagster. Easy to fill and they came to pick it up the next day!