The End

At least, the end for our basement saga. That's right, the last paint, the last carpet squares, the last rug is in place and I am DONE.  Gone is the scary room that existed when we bought the house, and, all through our own sweat equity (well, and an electrician). 

When we bought the house, it looked like this:  original 70's acoustic ceiling tiles (complete with 30 years of grime sitting above them), 70's dirty, dirty carpet, and old, yellow walls. Tom had actually already started taking up the carpet in these photos.

We started by painting the walls an off-white color and Tom put up new acoustic tiles by keeping the existing metal grid frame (we just spray painted the grid with a coat of fresh white).  We had an electrician get rid of the hanging light and install pot lighting throughout.  The scary window was replaced with a safer glass block one. Tom took out the old brown wood door and installed a fire rated steel door all on his own.  Did I mention how handy he is?

We even tackled under the stairs- there had to be a good use for this space, right?

The worst part for me was ripping the old carpet off the stairs and removing the hundreds of staples that remained before we repainted them and used our carpet squares (just cut in half)  from Home Depot as stair treads ($2/stair instead of the $10 real treads cost).

But after a year of working on the space off and on, this is what we ended up with:

That under the stair unusable space was suddenly the perfect place for all my ribbon and wrapping paper supplies.  Being that I am a bit on the impatient side and couldn't wait for my husband to build me spindles into the back of the stairs, I got adjustable cheap curtain rods from Walmart and wedged them in between the stairs. Not the ideal solution, but it has been working well to hold all the spools.  The second changing table we had now doubles as my wrapping paper and gift bag holder.

My laundry area got a quick makeover with a wire wall bin from TJ Maxx.

What a difference it has made -  I don't dread going down to throw in laundry or to grab something from the second fridge now.  If we were staying, the garage was going to be next on the list.  Celebrating the end of this project tonight!