A Tour of the Basement

We've been pretty busy around here lately, and a lot of that has been because of all the work we've done on the basement over the last few months.  We have a few more things to do before we're entirely done working on the basement, but we're mostly done with what we can get done at this time.  So, I thought I'd share some photos of the job.



So, when we moved in, the basement stairs were painted grey, and they had gaps between the boards and lots of nicks and scratches in the wood. 

So, I decided to start out by caulking all the gaps.

Then sanding the steps down.

Then I painted the risers and the sides of the steps white before painting the treads black, which took a while, since I painted every other step (so I could get back up the stairs after I finished painting) and then waited until the next day for them to dry before I painted the remaining steps.  Painting stairs is a bit of a pain, but I think they turned out well in the end.

I picked some nice photos of the boys being active, turned them black and white on the computer and printed them, and found some really cheap WalMart frames for them.  I thought they'd look nice hanging in the stairway, with the black and white steps and handrail.

The drywall on the little wall at the bottom of the steps was pretty beat up when we moved into the house.  So that was the first thing to fix when we started working on the drywall mudding and sanding.

And I think that part turned out really nice.

After finishing the drywall and painting downstairs, we were able to put up the baseboards along the steps (to cover a big gap that ran down the side of the stairs before).

If you go through the door at the bottom of the stairs, you come to the storage room.

After Michael and I mudded/sanded the drywall and painted the walls, I painted the cement floors. 

It was a big job, because I had to paint on the primer around the edges of the room as far as I could reach, then wait a day for it to dry before painting that area, then I'd paint the primer as far as I could reach again, then the paint, etc. until I got a whole room done.  It took a while, but I think the colors turned out really nice.

And now that we have some shelves set up in the storage room, it's so nice and organized.  I love being able to walk in and find things without having to step around boxes and stuff on the floors.

Beyond the storage room is the laundry room with the washer and dryer, the utility sink, water heater and furnace, and lots of our storage bins.

This room didn't have too much drywall to sand.

But the cinderblock wall behind the washer and dryer needed to be treated and painted, along with the floors.

What a difference!

And this is the main room in our basement -- this picture was from the first day we arrived at our house about 2 1/2 years ago.

After we first moved in, the basement became the place to put everything that didn't have a place yet.

And Michael and I were so proud of ourselves when we worked so many nights in December that first year here so that we could clean out that space and set up a nice playroom for the boys -- that was their big Christmas suprise.  And they sure have loved their playroom.

But since we know we will be moving next year, our realtor gave us a few suggestions on what to do to get the house ready to sell, and one was to sand and paint the walls and paint the floors in the basement.  I think mudding and sanding drywall is one of my least favorite house projects (and Michael agrees) -- we've sworn never to do this one ourselves again (if we ever have a large job like this to do again).  But after all the weeks of mudding, waiting to dry, sanding, and repeating, we finally decided it was good enough.  It sure took a while to clean up all that drywall dust.

Here is the playroom while I was priming the floor around the edges of half the room (we moved all the furniture to one side and did each half of the floor at a time).

Although we aren't able to fully finish the basement (we didn't drywall the ceiling or put in carpeting), I think anyone would agree that it's a big improvement.  And once we find a nice carpet remnant, that'll help get some padding down there for the boys too. 

It sure feels nice to have that job behind us!