Basement Playroom

I am joining the party a wee bit late, but when I found a new blog today, Kelly's Korner, I discovered that every Friday she has a linky party for us all to show a different room/area of our homes. I love that idea! So, last Friday's "Show Us Where You Live" was about playrooms/bonus rooms/laundry rooms. Since this was my blog post on Monday, I decoded to join the party! Better late than never! Go check out Kelly's blog to see everyone else's spaces!

When we bought our house 7 years ago, the basement was just your typical dark, ugly, unfinished basement. If the washer and dryer weren't down there, we would have only gone down when we blew a fuse! Once we had our boys, and the toys began overtaking our once uncluttered home, the need for more space started us thinking about finishing the basement, or at least part of it. It would be the perfect place for a playroom, since the only way anyone HAD to see it is if they chose to! So when we got serious, we began really looking at the space to figure out what configuration would work for us. Of course we had to consider the laundry area, the electrical box area, and the water valve area, and how much space we would want to keep unfinished for storage. The space we decided to finish was almost half of the basement, minus an area that has a rough-in for a bathroom. We left a space large enough to add a bathroom if we ever decide to, but for now, it is where I store all my holiday decorations. I have a LOT of Christmas and fall decorations!

Work on the project began in September 2007, on the day after Labor Day, which was also my oldest son's first day of preschoool and my husband's first day at his current job. Talk about a crazy time! So, here is the space once the studs were up: (BTW, all the wood was brought into the basement through the window!)

The drywall was quite tricky to get down the steps to the basement. The stairwell has a 180 degree turn. We will never be able to fit a full-size sofa down the steps (anyone ever see the Friends episode with "PIVOT!") But, once the guys figured out the trick to turning the drywall just so, the rest of the pieces made it down without a hitch. (I was a little worried for a while!)

Here is the space with walls and a ceiling! We went with the textured ceiling to hide the imperfections from our uneven floor joyces. The door in the back opens to a small space for the electrical box and sump pump. The contractor had a great idea to angle the door to use as little space as possible for the closet! The opening to the left leads to the unfinished half. Our washer and dryer are in this part. It would have been REALLY expensive to finish the laundry area, so we decided to hold off on that.


Here is the room all finished with carpet! Finding the right carpet at the right price was the most difficult part of the project.

And just three weeks after the project began, this was the day we moved the toys down. Yippee!

I love the little curtain I made for the window. I sewed two 79 cent quilting squares together and sewed white rings at the top to hang it from a cheap tension rod. I purposely chose a thin, light fabric that light would easily come through. We need all the light we can get through that little window!

I used as many black accents down here as I could. I love the black with the green (which is Behr Grass Cloth from Home Depot). We bought a cheap black particle board bookshelf for $28 at Target and secured it to the wall:

The white baskets with green gingham liners are from Pottery Barn Kids. They were originally in my oldest son's nursery. The green bins are from Walmart. They only carried this green color for a short while. I was so lucky to find them when I did! Ever since then, they have come in a beige color.

I painted our wicker chair, a pegrack, and my old toy box to finish off this wall:

This black table and chairs from IKEA also received some black paint:

I created a coloring supplies storage system for the wall behind the table, using a wall-mounted magazine rack and two small galvanized buckets. I secured the buckets to the magazine rack using cable ties.

I love our wall of pictures. 8X10 enlargements at Costco are very reasonably priced. The black frames are from Michaels. They come with the mat, and are only $4 when Michaels has their 50% off frame sales! I purchased the "Let's Play" vinyl wall decal from Uppercase Living.

And here is the room today:


We rotate toys around the room and the house as the boys' interests change. I also put some toys away for the summer, so that when we have to spend more time down here in the winter, the toys seem "new" again.

And my favorite part of the basement is behind these doors:



We had a scrapbooking closet built around our old kitchen table! I finally have a spot to keep all my stuff! Of course, an entire room would have worked as well (ha ha!), but I love this space. I can be in the middle of a project, get called away, and just close the doors on it. No more having to clean it all up! My husband loves it as much as I do, because we can see our dining room table on a regular basis now!

And behind door #2 . . .

This is where we left a space for a bathroom if we ever decide to add one. As I mentioned before, right now it is a great storage space for all my seasonal decorations. This is just a small portion of what's in here:

Scary, huh?

Family Room: Before & After

Our family room is what sold us on our house. Despite the peachy wall color and interesting berber carpet, we loved this room and saw its potential. We loved the great built-ins, mantel and wall of windows. We loved the overlook into the room as you climb the steps. We loved the cathedral ceiling. We loved the idea of finally having a fireplace, even if the tile wasn't exactly what we would choose. At least it was just a boring white. Something we could live with for a while. So, we bought the house, and soon after, my knees were shaking as I climbed up to paint that huge wall a warm olive green. And even though the other walls in the room were just going to be white, we had to paint them too, along with the ceiling. Because they weren't already white. They were peach. Ceiling and all. So we invested in a paint stick and were actually thankful that we didn't really love the carpet! Soon the room looked a LOT more as we had known it could:

A couple years later, we bought new furniture:


Then, after living with it for FIVE years (Two boys joined us during this time period and the room was a playroom for a while!), we replaced the carpet with hardwood, and the plain white tile with slate. We also got rid of the TV armoire and coffee table, and moved the striped chair to the living room, to allow our boys a little more floor space for playing. The furniture got new slipcovers and the windows got some treatments, and . . . this is our family room as it looks today:





Eventually, we are going to either buy an entertainment center for the blank wall, or mount the TV over the mantel (When my husband finally can't take it anymore and buys that big 'ole TV he's wanted forever!). If we buy the entertainment center, we will also need to have very tall drapes for the windows, to block out light when necessary. But hopefully that won't be for a while!

Stairwell and Hallway: Before and After

Peachy-apricot, once again! That's how I would describe our stairwell when we moved in. And the stain on the handrail didn't help any! So, we painted. My husband and I had an ongoing debate about whether the wall in front of the stairwell should be painted the same as the living room or the same as the wall on the other side of the little hallway leading to the family room, which was white. As you will see below, he won (this round). White it was. (I never liked it!) At first we used our sofa table below the stairwell. It was a nice place to display photos, and we didn't have a place for it anywhere else yet.

When we repainted the living room, I won the debate and the wall became Ralph Lauren Barn Owl White, like the LR. Looks much more cohesive, right? We also inherited the rusty red bench from my husband's Grandma. I love it here, and the red matches the red inside the secretary in the LR. Oh, by the way, I also painted the handrail! On this one, we debated white or black, and for now, we decided to play it safe. But one day, it may end up black with white spindles!


And my boys' sweet pictures and the vinyl wall words (Uppercase Living) add so much to the hallway!

Finally, here's a view of the stairwell from the family room. Amazing what just plain white paint can do!

Living Room: Before and After

Our living room--my constant source of angst in our house! I have always struggled with this room! When we first moved in, we didn't have enough furniture for a living room and family room, so we used odds and ends in the LR. Of course, the piano that came with the house filled up one wall--even if it was one very apricot wall! (The picture doesn't capture how very peachy-apricot this room really was!)

So, we painted--Restoration Hardware "butter." And we did what we could with what we had. . .

Eventually, we bought a secretary to replace the oak table above.

In the picture below, the chair on the left was my Grandma's and the chair on the right, I bought at Big Lots. I had the denim cushions reupholstered with this Waverly fabric that I love! The table is actually a patio table! (BTW, this wall is yellow, but didn't show up in the photo.)

Then we had kids! And before we finished the basement, we needed a place for all the toys! Soooo . . . our FR became a playroom, and we moved our couch, loveseat and entertainment center into the LR. We sold the yellow chair and the piano (No one plays and it was in awful shape!) Our coffee table and end table were stored in the basement. We NEVER liked this switch, but lived with it for about a year until we finished the basement. I also didn't get any good pictures of the room this way, but you can get the idea from these two.


Once we finished the basement, it became the playroom, and we moved the TV and sofas back into the FR. The wicker chair was painted black and moved to the basement. And the LR was REALLY EMPTY now with just our secretary! We brought up the coffee table and end tables, along with the striped chair and ottoman. We also bought the beige chair and sleeper sofa. And we got new carpet and painted: Ralph Lauren Barn Owl White.


This spring, we replaced our tables with black tables, and here is our LR today!







Here are a few of the details . . .

We have had these lamps our entire married life, and still like them! They have a slate-looking finish, which goes really well with the slate flooring in our dining room.

This plate on top of the secretary is from our collection of Paden City Pottery, which was made in our hometown in West Virginia from the 1930s-1950s. Three of our grandparents worked there.

I made this wreath over 12 years ago with the pods from a gum tree

We were given this beautiful picture as a wedding gift by my husband's cousin. It is hand-cut paper. It has been displayed in every place we have lived!