Basement is done!!!
Alright, folks, one more time for posterity. This was our basement when we moved in. The steps were brown painted but filthy and the walls had been dry-walled but had tons of holes and missing pieces.
Our good ol' friend John Scott patched the dry wall for us (he let me help mud the walls which was actually really fun) and he also sprayed the entire basement with a white primer to cover the dark blue that was EVERYWHERE! Those two steps basically made it possible to make this basement liveable. He also gave us tons of free paint. The only paint I bought was a bucket of porch paint to paint the wooden steps grey.
At the bottom of the steps, you used to see this. A door with a missing pane of glass which leads to a little tiny room that has weird stuff in it that goes under our front porch steps. There is literally an old broken organ in there and one of those washing tubs from the 1800s where there is a wringer to dry the clothes. OK, this one might have been from 1950 actually.
The floors throughout got a coat of paint which may or may not hold up since it was meant for concrete and our floors are tile. I painted the trim of the doors and painted the doors white as well. Then I bought this clearance curtain to hang in front of the broken door window.
So, this was our "big room" before. Mr Tommy ripped out some old cupboards that were moldy and gross, and all I had done up until a few weeks ago was to spray the walls with bleach and move all our junk in there. Really careful of me, right?
Well, the walls got bleached again and John patched the dry wall. Then after he sprayed it with primer, I came back through and painted the walls with his "oops" paint. This rug is an indoor-outdoor rug from Home Depot that I got for $12 on clearance. Then, I painted those little blue stripes on it to make it match the walls. Corny, I know. I got it off of the HGTV website a long time ago though, so I had to try it.
The room has quickly turned into exactly what I wanted it to be: a play room for all the crazy boy toys that this little house has been full of. Legos, playmobil, and train sets along with drums, tiny cars, and blocks of various kinds.
This was the corner of that room leading into another small room.
Here it is now.
Except then I put up these black-and-white pictures of the kids that I haven't been able to find a spot for throughout the other floors of the house. They are from when Claire was 2 and Sammy was a newborn.
Here is where the door leads out of the house in the front.
And here it is now.
Okay, if you turn directly around from facing the front door and walk through the door into the next room, you see this. Okay, this is where it gets REALLY corny because I ran out of the lighter colored basement floor paint and had to switch to the darker colored one. HEY, they were FREE from John, so I wasn't about to buy another bucket of the lighter colored paint. Thus, I decided to make this little squiggle mark on the floor to make it look more purposeful.
To the right, where you see this turquoise shower curtain is the furnace. Don't even look behind that curtain. It's super scary back there.
Then there is this tiny room where I intend to put a big folding table along the wall to throw the laundry on that needs to be folded.
And off of that room, on the left, is this tiny bathroom. I just put up that curtain and painted it and after Mr Tommy ripped out the rotten vanity and redid our plumbing, John gave me this refurbished white one that is working just swimmingly.
And last but not least is my laundry room. I don't have any before pictures, but imagine the dirtiest tile floor EVER and dark blue peeling crusty walls and a dark blue crusty ceiling. The white wall is the original back of the house, so it is brick painted white. The rest of the walls are underneath the addition of the house.
I can't tell you what a relief this is. We used to have to put on filthy shoes to walk into this basement and then we would take them off at the top of the stairs before walking through the rest of the house. Now it's CLEAN!
It's not perfect, and it's no spacious, finished suburban basement with a wet bar and a big screen TV, but I can't even tell you what adding this little bit of space to our tiny city rowhouse is going to do for my sanity. Now I can breathe. And have this baby. John...thank you! You're the best. Even though that stinky "Paint Jammer" primer stunk up our whole house for a week. It was totally worth it.
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