Basement renovation Project Part 2 : Fabulous flooring, paint swatch extravaganzas, and 1 incredibly picky baby!

As I've mentioned, we're extremely excited about our basement project and although the space has yet to be painted, and there's a concrete floor, I still venture down there just to peak at it, using excuses such as "I'm just looking over some paint samples down here...be right up!" or "I'm measuring my accent wall...be right back!" when in all honesty, I'm just down there...standing there...with Cece by my feet...basking in the newly found warmth and freshness, imagining the true amazing potential of the completely bare space!

I'll admit I'm slightly nervous about when I will find the time to put all this together! School has been a little stressful lately, and time has been extremely limited, but I vow to make it a point not to skimp on our basement design one bit, and I will continue blogging at least once a month and spending as much time with my little sweet pea as possible while I'm at home...and she's awake...no matter what! (Insert a couple more baby photos here...)

Back to the basement...Let's talk about lighting! We've taken lighting seriously, and didn't allow any detail to slip by when we were designing this space. We chose an abundance of recessed lights as well as (one pendent, then when that almost knocked someone out didn't work) track lighting (which Jon tells me not to refer to as tracklighting because that's not what it really is...he says) in the landing on your way down to the basement...and added a sconce next to Jon's practice room, which we thought would be simple (but ended up causing several major headaches.).

This passed Tuesday, our electrician and cabinetry-guy added all the lighting and finished shelving, woodwork, and doors etc. At this point, the basement is almost ready for paint, which makes me uber excited considering that choosing paint will be one of the major high lights of this project...and every project!! I could literally live in a paint sample aisle. I haven't taken pictures of the space yet with lighting and doors, woodwork etc, but I as soon as I have a chance, and it's not dark outside, I will!

Flooring is another important element, and we've narrowed down some flooring that we're considering purchasing and having installed for the space. We've chosen and ordered carpet already, and this will be installed on our steps as well as the baby's playroom. I love how the light pearly grays play off the charcoal grays, and how incredibly easy it will be to clean (hopefully) due to the multitude of shades of gray within this carpet...Isn't that the name of that book? Wait no...that's "50 shades of gray"!

 Here are our choices for laminate/hardwood. We've already chosen, but haven't ordered one yet.

 

Here of course, is my adorable little helpy helperton narrowing down our laminate/hardwood flooring choices for us!! It's about time this child establishes athority in this project - Afterall, my main goal is to create a gorgeous inspiring whimsical play space for the sweet pea as well as a relaxing loungy adult space!

 I'm definitely looking forward to blogging about and including more photos of this project! Stay tuned...Have an amazing weekend!! Thank you so much for stopping by! Maybe next time, I'll actually look at the camera!

Our newest and awesomely exciting renovation project!

Good Evening! After a long but interesting Saturday during which we hosted a yard sale, happily donated several items to thrift village, and spent well-deserved quality time with sweet pea, who is about to venture off into dream land, I'm finally settling down to commence a blog post about our latest project, (which I've been planning to create for a while), the basement! {Clara cooing at her fluffy giraffe from her crib while we speak} Here's a photo of Clara after our yard sale - completely pooped, and with dirty feet!! (Looks like her feet got an awesome tan!)

We've been extremely excited about our basement project and are slowly designing it from scratch. We made sure to get a dozen estimates, and thoroughly plan out every aspect of our project in order to make the basement as wonderful, aesthetically pleasing, and fully functional as possible, and in so doing, are now realizing how long it actually takes to come to a consensus about every single detail, opposed to just choosing flooring material or picking paint colors...or selecting one particular aspect of a room at a time. 

This is the 1st time we're literally designing a space in its entirety, and choosing all the materials, and all in one time frame, and my untamable imagination is absolutely running wild!! I wish I could say the sky is the limit, however the reality is that the wallet is the limit...not the sky...but the awesome challenge is just that - to ultimately create a warm, beautiful, welcoming, high-end looking-ish inspiring space on a smaller budget using great but inexpensive materials, while being as creative, artistic, and imaginative as possible with the resources and items available to me. This will be quite a difficult challenge I admit, especially when we're extremely limited on time during the day to even think about, let alone plan, our renovation project. There's been a tremendous amount of pressure at school, with several new procedures and systems in place, and many demands stretching us thinner and thinner, (You guys know what I'm talking about) but I still am making it a point to make time for a project that we've been hoping to work on for a long time now.

The most exciting aspect of this whole project, and the 1st thing we're going to focus our attention towards tackling will be the creation of Clara's sweet whimsical cottage play space, to which I'm hoping to dedicate one full blog post, because my brain in swimming in a playful pool of fantabulous ideas, and I'm uber excited!! This project alone, I'm anticipating, will be finished around late November, early December...My goal is to have Clara's playroom all finished for her 1st birthday so she can literally move right in...not that she won't be living on the other floors of our house. She's getting to that point where she could really benefit from having her own play space! We could benefit tremendously from storing her toys down there as well.

The other two spaces that the basement will consist of are a living area and Jon's practice room. Our plans for these two rooms are as follows...For the living room, we're hoping to create a high-end urban industrial vintagy feel, a cross between restoration hardware and arhaus (if you've never been...you need to go!) but keeping it fairly simple and streamline with just a few important furniture pieces and a couple carefully chosen art pieces and or a gallery wall that I've been planning in my brain for some time now. The color scheme is teetering between just gray and dark brown, and gray, brown, rust red, navy, and kelly green for more of a vintage urban feel.  For Jon's practice room, style and color scheme are still to be determined; The only certainty is that we're installing a beautiful wooden door with glass panels and a vintage sconce, which we have yet to find, in the practice room entry. Here are some photos of the 1st couple steps of our basement remodel.

Step 1 : We cleared everything out of the basement

Step 2 : The basement was framed

We are in the process of drywall, which is the 3rd and most exciting step so far if you ask me, and while we were hosting our yard sale, the crew was working extremely hard, non-stop, on nailing, taping, and carefully spackling the drywall. Jon and I are anticipating this portion of our basement project to be done by Wednesday, which is tremendously exciting, especially because the whole floor plan really comes together and you can literally witness the 3 separate zones coming to life, making it much easier to creatively envision the final project, and come up with a clear plan of attack!!

We've thoroughly thought through lighting options, and have decided upon recessed lights and are envisioning a vintage industrial sconce near the entryway to Jon's practice room, which will be the room on the other side of the door way shown in the photo above. We're also planning to put in a beautiful wooden door with glass panels, after much contemplation about and searching for rustic barn doors, then vintage doors, and arriving at the conclusion that a brand new wooden door with glass panels (opposed to a old vintage door) was the safest and best way to go. I'm definitely relieved that we won't be on a crazy search for vintage doors anymore, and can move on to other important details, although I will admit it was extremely exciting to find these beauties at this breathtaking antique store in Salem near Jon's work, an ad for which he stumbled upon on Craigslist:

Unfortunately, they just won't fit and there's always a possibility of danger using old materials in your house when you have a curious infant or todler...and a kitty who loves to lick old doors and shutters!! (that's certainly a post for another day) I just don't want to take that chance!

As of now, we still have a long way to go! I'm extremely pleased with how the project is turning out so far...and so is little pink socks!

If only I could get these two moving a little faster in the morning...and keep them focused!

"Here Kitty Kitty! Um...yeah, out you go!"

"Meeeooow!!"

 Thank you so much for stopping by! Hope your weekend is wonderful and that you're enjoying this amazing weather! Wasn't it gorgeous out today?!