Basement Part 3

In case you missed it and want to get caught up, you should check out the first and second installments on the basement remodel. Those installments left us with the drywall up and getting mudded.

Priming the walls.

Drew and I decided to prime the walls and ceiling as soon as the mudders were finished. There was so much dust everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) so we wanted to try and minimize that as much as we could. We figured by priming the walls and ceiling, we'd lock in whatever dust was present on the walls and that had to help. So we primed and then painted the ceiling. Drew's plan was to get the doors and trim up, unfinished, so that we could have a professional come in and stain and lacquer the wood. Since it's a basement and basements are known for their fluctuating humidity levels, Drew felt that making sure that the trim joints were sealed was a good idea. Therefore, the ceilings were painted, but the walls were left with primer on them.

Painting the ceiling.

The trim and doors were delivered in the middle of May and my love was busy every single day until the middle of July. So there were one or two Saturdays he and his dad devoted to the trim, but we weren't able to get it finished until Drew had those days off. He did a phenomenal job. That's all I need to say about that. Phenomenal. We also worked with my dad on getting the outlets and switches wired up. I installed the baffles and trim on the can lights and Drew installed the smoke detectors.

The trim is up! And so are the can lights and smoke detectors.

We also had a custom cabinet built to give us a dry bar of sorts on one end of the basement. It was built to match the door style and we were able to stain it to match the rest of the wood in the basement.

More trim! And a glimpse of the custom cabinets.

We ended up choosing mission style doors mainly due to the sizes of doors that we needed. Specifically the heights associated with the doors. The house is 60 years old so the basement is 7 feet. The soffits dip down even further and some of our doors needed to be quite a bit shorter than standard. We knew we didn't want plain doors, but we also didn't want 6 panel doors since they didn't really fit with our 1950's ranch home. I really like the two panel Roman arch top doors, but by the time you cut the door down to size, the placement of the door knob was going to look funny with the spacing of the panels on the door. We settled on a mission style door since that seemed to be the style that allowed the most flexibility. I think it was an excellent decision.

The mission style doors. See how they still look OK even when they are different heights?

We had a professional come in and stain the wood since we had a lot of wood and the lacquer is so potent. Potent might be too tame of a word. It was toxic. Burn your nose and make your eyes water toxic. We spent two nights with family so we weren't anywhere near the house for the roughest days, but it was still quite stinky when we got back home. Our painter had the store mix up a special stain color for us so that it would match the wood in the previously remodeled bathroom and it matches pretty well. However, we were a bit concerned after we got back and saw the stained wood. I thought it looked pretty yellow and Drew thought it looked pretty red. I'm sure the stain over spray and lovely yellowed tiles didn't help us get a true feel for the color.

The stained wood coupled with the over spray, coupled with the yellowed tiles made it difficult to grasp the true color.

After the wood was stained, I got to flex my home improvement muscles. Not to brag or anything, but I've got some mad painting skills. Drew doesn't really enjoy it so I took a few days off of work and took care of the painting. I should also point out that the guy who stained our wood also taped the wood off so I didn't have to tape anything down there. That was huge. While I enjoy painting, taping is not something I relish so I was happy to have him do it for me.

The bedroom with the lovely egress window.

We lucked out on the bedroom paint. My brother had just sold his house and had an extra gallon from one of the rooms. The color was a light green and we thought it would work nicely for the bedroom so he gave it to us. (Thanks bro!) For the main room, Drew and I picked a light grayish-taupe color. We had already decided that we were going with a darker carpet so we wanted to make sure the walls were light enough to keep the basement from looking too dark. So I painted everything, including the walls heading up the steps since half of the walls up the stairs were new drywall.

The main room in the basement. The walls really didn't look like the color they are until the carpet was laid. Here, I think they look white.

After the paint was finished, we had someone come in and install our carpet. The guy was someone Drew knew and he gave us a huge head's up on a carpet deal that allowed us to save some serious cash. It took him a day to install the carpet and two days later we had the furniture delivered. I'm going to leave it here because not all the furniture was delivered the first time and I'll save the big reveal for the final installment.

Carpet going down the stairs.

Kramer gives her approval of the newly carpeted basement. It's a whole other area for her to run around in!