Basement Update

Our winter break project was to replace the carpet in our finished basement. We decided to replace the main living space, half bath, and laundry room with laminate. Our garage door is off of our basement so a lot of dirt/grass gets tracked in. I really wanted a solid surface for ease of cleaning. We want to use this as another living space or potentially a future playroom. It looks kind of blank right now except for cat stuff and exercise equipment, but we'll get there!

I kind of forgot to take before pictures until after we had started ripping out carpet so a lot of these are more like 'during' pictures. We changed out a few lights, replaced smoke detectors, updated the electrical outlets and switches, and painted too.

I did find this picture from a friend's album that showed her dog on our treadmill haha. You can see the blue carpet under the treadmill. Nothing exciting.

More 'during' pictures. You can see the laminate and Quiet Walk in the corner, ready to get put down! We'd also started edging at this point. We painted the main room, hall, and half bath a greige color (Revere Pewter - Benjamin Moore). We wanted to keep things pretty neutral.

Here are some after shots. I took pictures at a bad time of the day so the brightness from the windows was hard to work around. We purchased our laminate from Lumber Liquidators and the color was a light mahogany.

Well at least this shows the color of the floor!

This is the half bath off of the hallway. We need to update the pull string light at some point. We left everything else. The mirror, toilet, and pedestal were in good shape.

For some odd reason this was the way the builders decided to utilize the storage under the stairs. Weird.

After!

In the before pictures you could see exposed pipes that were tacked to the baseboard. I think this bathroom was added at a later point. We found some white moulding that fit over top of the piping. That way it will still be pretty easy to access if we ever need to get to the pipes.

I got my mother-in-law to sew some curtains for behind the toilet. I found this martini fabric on Etsy and they do a good job of concealing the gigantic hole behind the toilet.

Here's another before looking down the hallway. The half bath is on the door to the left and straight forward is my laundry room.

Here was our before of our laundry room. I had started to call to get quotes to see if we could get drywall put up over the concrete walls and to conceal all of the piping. This room is a pretty tight space and our washer and dryer just fit. I was afraid that adding drywall was going to make the room too small. I also realized this was going to be more money than I felt like putting into a laundry room by hiring a contractor.

After. I figured this was a good place to let a little color show :) That's a dog proof litterbox on the rug in case you were wondering what that box was haha.

I decided to put some $9.99 curtains from Target up with a tension rod to hide all of the piping. I added a decal and painted the exposed concrete walls. We've never had water issues so our local Lowes recommended we used DryLok Fast Plug to fill any large holes and we primed with a concrete filler/primer. I think it was Olympic brand. The paint color was Jalapeno Jelly (Valspar).

Looking back down the hallway. My dog is being a photobomber around the corner.

My husband thought this would be a good accessory to slap every time we walked down to the basement :) You can see the color difference in this picture too.

I also decided to replace our lights beside the door today. This is the only picture I could find of the outside of our home. This was our "We just bought a house!" picture.

Here are the new lights and you can also see our new screen door that we added last Fall as well. Another shih tzu photo bomb for ya.

Thanks for looking!

Completed Bathroom!

Just in case you forgot what we were working with here. This honestly all started b/c the toilet needed replacing. I casually mentioned that while we had the toilet up maybe we should replace the lovely blue linoleum. Well, and while we had to rip everything out maybe we should just replace the vanity and so on. You know, when you give a mouse a cookie.


Here's the picture of the other wall again. I was a little too excited to pull the medicine cabinet out of the wall so I don't have any before pictures of it.


Here's the after!


Here is a close up of the pictures of Tuck above the toilet. I got inspired by these shih tzu bath pictures and gave Casey the job of photographer during one of Tuck's baths.




Here's a better look at the sink area. No hole in the wall anymore!


This is one of my favorite parts of the bathroom. We had a faucet like this at our hotel in Maui on our honeymoon and I think of that every time I see it. We ended up purchasing the sink and vanity set separate b/c there were no combos that looked that great in this room. It's kind of hard to see but our tile has reddish tones to it and there's a little bit of that reddish tone in the granite.



New working toilet! This toilet has actual given us trouble from the get go as far as the installation but I think it's finally ok now. I think we'll definitely be replacing the toilet downstairs in the powder room with the one we have in our master bath b/c we've been really happy with that one so far and the installation went much smoother.



There were fixtures that matched the bamboo faucet but they were really more than I wanted to pay. I just could not fathom paying $50 for a toilet paper holder. I found these at Home Depot and the edges actually resemble the bamboo fixtures that we originally wanted but the price was much better.


We're lucky to have linen closets in the guest bath and in our master. I keep all of the towels in here and we have cleaning supplies and medicine cabinet items in our linen closet.


Here's a close up of the floor and our new floor register.


One last shot just because!


The hardest part of this whole project was all of the patch work on the walls. Getting rid of the sexy vanity bulb strip and smoothing the wall to move down to a smaller vanity and mirror was very tedious. Patching the medicine cabinet hole was also tedious b/c there was a lot of applying joint compound, sanding, waiting, and repeating. I purchased a little DeWalt electric sander halfway through this project and I wish I would've had it from the get go. We've already used it again to sand down the doors to accommodate the new floor level. I was worried about going from a 47" vanity to a 30" but I think it gives the room more space and it's just not as overwhelming.

The tile was the easiest part ironically enough b/c that's what we were the most nervous about. Measuring to make sure the tiles were even and cutting was the hardest part of tiling but it was a relatively quick process once we got started.

This was our first big DIY renovating project and it went pretty well. We learned a lot and we got our hands wet in a little bit of plumbing, a lot of tiling, and a little bit of drywall work. Everything always seems much more daunting when you're trying something new but I'm glad we've attempted some of the things we have since we've lived here. It's allowed us to save money and it's given us confidence when it comes to doing other projects.

This has also become a hobby that we really enjoy doing together. Sometimes there are some tense "..but HONEY, I don't think you have the clamp down hard enough", "Well, HONEY if you think you can fit your hand in this space then maybe you should do it" hahaha, but we worked in a tiny space together for weeks and we worked well together.

Thanks for looking!

Oh Dear

First we had this which was a little out of date. Nice blue flowered linoleum, old sink, broken toilet, 90's bulbs and builder grade mirror.


There was also a medicine cabinet randomly in the side of the wall. They are in both full baths and both of the full baths have vanities and linen closets so the medicine cabinet seemed a little overkill so we jerked it out of the wall. In case you were wondering, Sookie definitely inhabited this room before we started on this project. We want to move her stuff to the basement when it gets warmer.


Then this happened and we noticed there was no junction box where our light was. That sounded safe! But look, the medicine cabinet hole is gone!


I remedied the junction box issue and we put up a new light.


Oh hey, this is what I look like when I'm working on the bathroom or when I'm going out the door to my niece's birthday party when Casey is taking pictures.


Tuck appreciates the sink hole in the wall.


Now the toilet is gone, the linoleum is ripped up, the tiling is done, the painting is done, and the grouting is finished. We need to caulk and put up baseboards and of course the new toilet and vanity. This is a guest bath that we don't use so we're really taking our time and working on it when we can so that we don't get burnt out from the project. I'll show plenty of pics when we're done, don't worry :)

Out with the old...

... and in with the new!

We got our door hardware that we ordered for all 17 of our doors today and we installed all of the ones on the first floor and it's a huge improvement and the handles are really smooth. I'm pricing hinges but that will be our next project.

Small Update

This was the most recent picture of our fireplace from Christmas. We can't add tile surround b/c it will be too close to the entertainment center and we intend to replace the black tile when we replace the flooring so I just did a quick update to get rid of the brass and the wooden handles.


Much better!

Dining Room

I've hesitated posting my dining room as finished b/c I have two sets of blinds on backorder for one set of the windows. I know, I know.. I have issues.

Anyway, we didn't have to do much to this room at all. It got the outlet overhaul and we didn't mind the light fixture so it was just a matter of paint, window treatments, and furniture.

Here's a picture from the listing



Here's afterwards

Bamboo Blinds - JCP

Sheers - Bed Bath and Beyond

Black wooden curtain rod - Lowes

Dining room furniture - Havertys

Runner - Etsy

Paint - SW Humble Gold

It was really important when we were looking at houses to have a dining room. We've lived in apartments for a long time that have always had an open concept and not really a designated place for a table. Having a space like this is one thing that actually makes me feel like I have a home, if that makes sense. It's good for entertaining or when we have family over and we actually have a space to lay stuff out now if it's needed.

I'm getting close to calling my closet finished as well but we still have to patch and paint the ceiling so that will be coming up soon!

Light Progress

We decided to change out our two hallway lights this afternoon.


Pretty huh?

One down...

Fluffy puppy gets bored with home improvements. He protests by sitting in the middle of everything.

I do just as much as Casey. Don't be fooled. After he installed the first light and had to redo it I told him that behind every man with a tool is a woman with instructions.

Both of them up and going. Much better!

I also came home to my candle exchange gift! I joined an online Fall exchange and we decided to do candles this year. I just mailed mine off today so I hope my receiver likes the ones I picked out. I got a great deal on soy candles that were being discontinued. My sender gave me a spiced cider candle and a harvest spice cake candle. They smell great and make me excited for the coming of Fall which is tomorrow ahhhhh....

Just one last picture from the Tech game on Saturday as we were leaving. We tailgated early and had a great time and we're heading back for the Boston College game in a couple of weeks. Most people know I'm not a big football fan, but I do like the socializing aspect of games ;)

After the game we came home and crashed. We were dogsitting this past weekend so we just let the dogs play while we napped on and off. I managed to get motivated to put a roast on Sunday and I'm sure we'll have that again sometime this week. We just finished up an easy dinner (taco night) and I'm blogging inbetween the premiere of House tonight. Oh how I've missed you Fall tv.