Basement Reno!!!

This post is LONG overdue! We finished the main chunk of the basement back in early December. The second bedroom down there was finished up for Jared and the family room was completed. Derek and Dustin had been working on this project since right before Noah was born. They didn't completely finish the laundry room yet because we weren't in a huge rush to finish it. The drywall is up, but they still need to mud it. There is a room for a bathroom but that's not coming until later on.

I LOVE having the family room! We bought our home with the thought in mind that we would finish the family room fairly quickly. But we decided to hold off starting it for a while and then it took a lot longer to finish because of things that came up so it ended up finishing a year after we bought the house. So it was SUCH a relief to finally be able to put the sectional & TV downstairs! The couch was WAY too big for the upstairs front room. And since the couch was taking up the whole front room, there wasn't much room for a dining room table, so our dining table was in our kitchen which took up the whole kitchen and you could barely walk around it when we had people over -- you get the picture. Now we can have our sitting room/dining room upstairs and the space feels so much bigger.

Downstairs is nice and cozy to watch movies, we love it! And with the TV down there I've noticed that I don't watch as much TV during the day. Derek and I got into a bad habit of eating most of our meals in front of the TV since it was right there. It's less tempting to turn on a show when we have to go all the way downstairs, especially when we have a nice, big, dining table waiting for us now!

I chose a light, fresh blue color for the walls and I am pretty happy with it. We did a cream color for the trim and doors. We also did the same cream for the stairs. However, because of the lighting difference, the stairs look a little yellow to me. It's not what I had in mind, I actually liked how the stairway looked better when it was just primed. So I want to repaint the stairs white for now (when we get around to it). I might add something a bit more fun to them later on, but I just love white so much. I was going for the cottage-look.

I love the fact that there are not toys all over the floor in the front room now! It's much easier to keep upstairs clean and tidy since there is less clutter.

I haven't even started putting up pictures/art up yet because I don't like putting them up if I don't have enough for the whole wall to look balanced (so it doesn't look bare and awkward). You may or may not know what I mean. Either way, I'll get around to it.

For now, here are some before & after pictures. Enjoy!

(Okay, well this is after they had already started framing out the walls.)

Looking out from the stairs

Hallway & post

This is now a hallway and that red & tan wall was knocked down to put a door into my mom's room

That's the entrance to Jared's room. 

You can see behind the metal framing is where the laundry room is (it's huge!) That metal framing was already there when we bought the house, it just needed to be moved around

Looking out from the far corner 

**Okay in the next 2 photos you can really see the difference because they were taken at relatively the same angle :)

 And this is after the carpet was installed...

Some doors still needed to be put on when I took the picture 

You can see this is before the stairs were painted (on the left). That's the door to the laundry room, where the metal framing was

Hallway down to my mom's bedroom & future bathroom

Mounting the TV

Okay and here are some before and after photos of the stairway... It was so dark and grungy before. I was always scared of spiders hiding in the corners! They were (and still are) also pretty beat up. I was tempted to try to paint them purposely making them look distressed, worried that if I tried to make them look nice it wouldn't look right. But I didn't know how it would turn out. So I just painted them without distressing and they actually look great. It's amazing how much of a difference some paint makes!

Side door

And now... let there be light!

Side entrance

**but remember the stairs are not completely done, they still need to be painted again. 

That's all for now. I will post more pictures of the set up later on. I am so happy with it! And I'm extremely grateful for Derek and Dustin and a few other helpers along the way. They are awesome!