Guys, let’s just call our basement a “bonus floor!” What I mean by that is there is no chance we’d be jumping into a full-fledged basement renovation with our budget and home & life priorities. But since the structure is there, we’re able to do what we do best: see something that’s already existing and update it to make it our own!
I shared a brief overview of our basement plans in our House Project Goals for 2019 post from a few weeks ago. I’ve been working out our budget, pinning inspiration over on Pinterest, narrowing down color schemes, and saving all the products we’re loving! But today, since we haven’t given you a proper tour of the space, we’re going to show you the “before.” We have a lot of DIY projects up our sleeves and we’re hoping they’ll turn out like we envision in our heads like they always do, right? Haha! Maybe we’ll just go for “better than before.” We’ll be hiring a contractor for things that require a lot of power tools (just say “no” to sliced off fingers) and electricity.
The Basement Tour: Before
Ah, yes! Can you see it? An updated drop ceiling, painted wood paneled walls, painted built-in cabinets, new baseboards and painted doors, the carpet replaced with luxury vinyl wood planks, and can lighting to complement it all? 😉 We can!
So, why now?
We have our reasons, but they aren’t very complicated.
- We’re not working on any other big projects, so we have space in our schedule & life to start this one!
- We’ve been saving for this specifically for a while and have a budget set aside.
- Since water has been an issue in the past, we want to update the space before we or our guests spend too much time down there.
- It’s winter – cold and dreary – so we don’t mind spending time working on the basement (it’s actually a lot of fun)!
- Mike and I have a desire to start a family within the upcoming years and we dream of this space being a wonderful place for families and kids – ours included! Since we’ll be doing some of the work ourselves (ripping up carpet, painting, cleaning ceilings), it would be ideal to complete the bulk of the DIY projects prior to pregnancy or little ones (ideal, but not necessary).
So there you have it! Our timeline goal of having the structural pieces complete is the end of March, but adding in our style and furniture will be a process just like everything else in our home!
I’ll be sharing that process and all my DIY projects here on the blog! If you’d like to follow along with us, I’d invite you to subscribe the Redeeming Hampton email list. You’ll get an email each time a new blog post is live!
I’d love to know, do you have wood paneling in your home or in a basement?