Project Basement

Happy Saturday!  Saturday mornings are one of my favorite things about the week.  I am always the first one up, and I don't have to get the boys up.  So I have usually an hour or two completely to myself.  Well, Freddy and I.  So peaceful.

I'm looking around the house wondering what the plan is going to be for the day.  It absolutely should be cleaning.  It's crazy around here.  I know I say this all the time, and unfortunately, it's usually very true.  But often it's explainable--not just that we're lazy.  Hubby is constantly involved in major projects, and during the winter they're all in the house.  And right now it's the basement.  It's a very large basement, and now everything that was in the big main room is now out.  Either forced into other areas of the basement, taken out to one of the buildings, or in the main living area.  It's a bit chaotic.  So today should be spent, for the most part, trying to make sense of all the madness.

I also need to squeeze in a quick grocery trip.  And we promised the kiddos that once we had some snow we'd take them to the ski hill to go tubing or something, and there's some snow on the ground now.  So A is convinced we're going today, and I think we should do that.  So I have major doubts we'll get much cleaning done.  I'll probably spend my time at home holding wood up on the ceiling in the basement for the hubby.  Which is fine.  It's going to look so cool when it's done!  And the change is going to be ginormous!  Here's some before pictures--this is before we got all the crap out of the big room, so keep an open mind:

This is one side of the room.  The walls are concrete block, painted white.  But they're really gross.  That big gray square by the ceiling is where they had to cut out and re-cement in when we put in our fireplace upstairs.  It's super rough.  The room used to be way more packed with stuff than this--we had already done a lot of work when I started taking photos.

Here's the view from the other end of the room.  It's a really big room.  The floor is smooth concrete, and the ceiling is just those beams.  We're going to carpet it--they're coming to measure for it very soon--and put in a ceiling.  The ceiling is going to be knotty pine carsiding, which will look super cozy.  The walls will remain concrete block, but hubby is getting them all treated and prepared, and they will be painted a warm cream color.

Unfortunately, the rest of our basement is currently a catch all for everything else.  Eventually we might finish more of it, but for now we're just going to try to get it cleaned up and more organized.  This craziness isn't even usually quite this bad.  We just had to put all the stuff from the big room out into this part.  Augh!

The area with the fridge will be changed and cleaned up and made into a nicer space.  Kind of an extension of the upstairs kitchen.  The door into the big room is between that white laundry basket and the silver shelves.  The fridge is our beer/pop fridge, so that will still be handy to have down there.  Then those shelves can be used for more kitchen-y stuff too.  Trust me--it's going to be sweet.

I might have to post more picture of the process.  Because it already looks way better than these photos, and these are sort of embarrassing.  The big room is completely empty and cleaned out now.  A lot of the crap in the pictures has been at least organized a bit, if not removed.  It's coming along.  Maybe I'll post some pictures once we get some of the ceiling put on.

Once the big room is finished, we're using it for a family room.  We'll put a nice TV down there and all the video game stuff, the DVDs, some cushy seating.  One side will have a table and chairs for games or whatever, and WHEN my hubby gets the treadmill fixed, that will be in there too.  Ahhh.  I can't wait!!!!

So I guess if the house is trashed for a while, it's all going to be worth it.  I'll be excited to post the "after" pictures.  To redeem myself, of course.  I can't believe I let you guys see this stuff.