A sweet reader, Monica, dropped in and left a comment the other day that read:
This is fantastic! We have a similar basement that we’d like to transform. Can you provide some clarity on how you actually renovated it? For example, did you tile right over the concrete floor? Is your ceiling pinned right to the old ceiling? What about wires or pipes? And you just drywalled the walls I assume?
It made us realize that while we touched on it here and there, and while you can find everything from our entire 1976 house renovation under our Money Pit series, it was such a process, the steps became garbled over time. So we thought it was probably good to touch on it again, in one succinct place. For what it’s worth, at the time of writing this I’m still waiting on a few key pieces that were on backorder, so we’ll also be adding to this post to share our final reveals, as well. Our basement is something we’ve received the most questions on so far, so let us know if you’re dropping in today to make sense of our posts with the timeline of our basement, if we can point you in the right direction for anything!
So let’s start at the very beginning, shall we? The story of how we took it from giant spiders and clowns-in-a-crawlspace creepy psychopath basement, to our family’s favorite hang out spot. {Without all that boring 1.5-year waiting period permit stuff, (wheeee Franklin!) anyway.}
Beyond our initial house tour, the one where we discussed our basement plans extensively {nearly three years ago this month!} can be seen here.
In retrospect, we’re glad we waited to begin this basement, because septic and all things permissions. It gave us a year after finishing the upstairs part, to think about what we wanted with the space, along with letting our funds recover a bit. To be honest, at the beginning, we weren’t sure what to do with those giant garage doors, and knew we didn’t want two large and in charge windows in their space. This amongst a few other obstacles like the crawlspace door and giant looming HVAC coming from the ceiling took some thoughtful solutions.
We finally began to make progress here this past fall, when we were granted a permit. We cleaned everything out, and started the drywalling process, right over all those unsightly cinder blocks and intrusive hvac – even though that part was new.
We took a slight detour and were quite derailed when a few more funds were given to our crawlspace due to moisture issues. It was promptly taken care of, and we’re so glad we were made aware of said issues before the rest began. It’s here that we share more plans and how they’ve progressed, along with the outside and how it will meld with the inside.
We did our own spray insulation, here.
You can see drywall installed, here. AKA we were able to get rid of those gross poles by enclosing one in the drywall, and eventually, another just closed in.
The ceiling progress / built-ins/ priming {and outside progress that was happening as well} It all started to come to life!.
Our “Big reveal” with paint and things actually clean, and all the fun lights, here. – AKA the great before and afters.
Design plans for all the pieces + sources that polish it up, in each area…. here + here + here
A sneak peek with our barn doors – details and how to hang them – {from Artisan Hardware} here + our finished stairs how to here
At one point after we moved in and frantically threw everything in the basement, it shamefully looked like this. Now, it looks like this.
And our studio area finished, here.
Stay tuned for more, we’ll be adding as we go!
While a basement renovation looks complicated, it’s down to the basics and a little polish to finish it all off! No more murderous clown areas, that’s for sure.
As always, let us know if you have any questions. We’re oh so close to having it all complete. And so glad to be here after such a journey.
Have an inspired day!
