{A little Construction!!}

We are currently working on a little project in our basement…

Ok. 

Maybe it's not that little!

But we are pretty dang excited for the much needed extra space!

We moved into this home with it 90% complete.  The only unfinished space was this very large storage room. We've lived with it for this long and I do love having room to store all our crap- but that is all about to change. 

Our Basement has a lot of doors… it kind of drives me crazy. 

Since we spend majority of our time down here as a family we really felt like a room for toys/books/movies/ect. would really help with our space issue.  And after a lot of time talking, calculating, and trying to figure out how to remedy this we decide to dive in and create a play room. 

Here is the story:

Like I said, the storage room was huge. Although I do love me some great storage space, we feel like a lot of the room is being wasted. When we moved in about 7 years ago we loved the idea of having TONS of room to put our things in, but as the years have went by… and kids have grown… we are soon realizing that we need all the living space we can get! The last few years we have been throwing around the idea of cutting the Storage room in half and making one side a designated play space for the kids. But between life/work/ and having small children the time wasn't really right to dig into it… until now!! 

I wish I had a picture of the room how it was before- but I don't. Just imagine a very large storage room with lots of boxes, christmas decor, concrete floors, water heater, food storage, and all that other good cluttered crap! A few weekends ago we cleaned everything out of the one side of the room; I sold some things, DI'ed a few things, and threw away some things. As for everything else- we piled it all high on the other side of the room!! It's a mess. 

It gets a lot worse before it gets better. Right?

The space we are finishing is 12x12 sq. ft. space. We bought sheetrock and materials for framing but are reusing as much as we can. (The door and trim) We also had Jordan (A friend of my Bro-in-law) come and do the electrical work for us. He was so great to work with and even threw in a few unexpected stair lights as well!

Look at those stairway lights?!! Besides the fact that they stay on 24/7 we think they are pretty awesome! These lights were a complete surprise to me, Randall asked Jordan to install them without me knowing- I was pretty excited- I'm a simple girl. 

Oh, back to the reason for this post, the new doorway was expanded and already looks so much better! We (meaning The Man and his Twin Richard) were able to frame the room out and tear down the exsisting doorway into the room. Im excited about how much bigger it made the space feel!

Before & Now...

My kids are a little scared of this room in its current state! There is no light so it does appear to be a big black hole! But it does make for a great hide and seek space. 

Tomorrow (Tuesday) sheet rocking/tape/and texturing starts! Bring on the mess! (Not really- Im already anxious about the dust sheet rocking brings- grr.) 

This is where we are as of now. 

After the tape and texture work is finished this week, we are hoping that we can dive in and have the room painted and install the trim this weekend. I'm itching to do something! 

Our plan all along as been to keep the space simple. It will act as the kids play area for now, then grow with them. There is not a closet or window so I'm planning on adding fun lighting and a lot of storage. 

As of right now we are still debating on what to do for the flooring. I'm leaning towards the same hardwood that we put in our entire upstairs living space, mainly for clean up reasons. The Man is wanting carpet- because we have extra on hand. I'm not sure what we will end up doing! 

Stay tuned for the progress of this little project! 

What do you think? Would you give up 1/2 your storage space?