Basement Renovation Part 4 : This wonderful space and our 1st phase of decorating is finally complete

The passed four weekends we've been completely consumed with finishing up important details in our new exciting underground space! We are done our 1st phase of decorating, which includes shelf staging, a couple major pieces of art or photos displayed, a couple minor piece of furniture painted and placed in the space, general staging of the playroom. Our paint, stain, flooring, lighting, is finished, with the exception of 4 steps for which we need extra carpet because we didn't order enough (that's a dramatic saga within itself), but in its place are four lovely rows of extremely kid-friendly (right...) tac strips, extremely attractive to an adventurous and insanely curious 10 month old, whose favorite activities so far in the basement are dragging legos across the hardwood and attempting the climb the steps...with the tac strips. Thank Goodness the cat has yet to build up enough courage to venture down there into the unknown...Hopefully by the time she does, the carpet will be completely installed and we won't need to worry about anything sharp.

Here are some pictures taken of our finished spaces : 1st - the landing and 2nd - Clara's fresh modern, but still sweet and girly playroom. (The rooms that remain undecorated at this time are Jon's music practice room and our living room lounge space, which I'll be focusing on this summer and post about later.)

This adorable puppet theater was a fabulous garage sale find that mom and I scored over a year ago. Trust me, it looked nothing like this when we 1st picked it up, but mom worked her unmistakable magic and turned it into something exquisite!! Clara absolutely loves it!!

 

Hope you enjoyed our new imaginative whimsical space! Have an incredible Thanksgiving and eat tons of turkey! Time to get ready for tomorrow's exciting festivities!

God Bless!!

"Daddy! Just "leave" em!!

Nothing like an amazing inspiring fall day in all it's lovely jewel tones and crispness...Look at all those beauteous leaves!! All those leaves...ugh...While Dad's hard at work gathering them, which he soon realizes is a tad too difficult and has to hire someone to do it for us, my little sweet pea discovers that a gigantic pile of leaves can be a ball of laughter, and makes sure she tastes one just to see if they're edible - In the mood for a mid-afternoon dry, leafy, tasteless snack, anyone?

 

"Dadddd!! Please come inside and play wif me!"

 

"Wait, I might just have the perfect idea! Stay right there, I'll come to you!"

 

"Bleh!!!"

"Ick, my sockies are soaked!"

 

"That was Fall-bulous!! Let's do it again! Heh heh!!"

Thanks for stopping by and please stay tuned for our newly renovated space reveal!!

Basement Renovation Part 3! Paint, flooring, lighting, and happy baby!

Life has been insanely busy, as I'm certain it has been for all of you. I've been meaning to create this post so that I can stay current when blogging about our basement renovation, which is going quite well, but I've fallen a little behind, so tonight, after Clara dozed off and settled into Dream land, I (while uploading important artifacts into my document library on McRel), managed to finish this post. That said, let's jump right in...

Our basement is finished and painted! The paint colors look amazing and the crew was fantastic!! (More details on this below) We've already begun neatly storing items in the small unfinished section of the basement, for which we purchased a heavy duty shelving unit from Lowes that will allow us to stay exceedingly organized.

This Friday, our flooring will be installed - Yes! Jon picked up the (laminate) wood flooring from Lowes today and our carpet came in a couple days ago. The flooring installation will be the last step before we're able to begin styling the room, and I can't wait! I'm literally shaking in my boots with pure excitement, creativity bursting! Because we've been incredibly busy with school this year - so many new policies, paperwork, etc. - I've literally had to schedule a date with myself for the design/decorating process so that I have specific time set aside for this exciting project.

Here are a few photos of our basement reno in progress (taken at night, so lighting isn't the best) :

Below are a couple current photos taken within the last day or two. The spaces you will see are as follows : Clara's wonderful playroom to the left, our living space to the right, and Jon's music room in the back to the left behind the playroom. For the ledge in the landing and on the half wall of Clara's playroom, as well as Jon's music room's door, we used a minwax stain, which came out marvelous - love love love it! We're extremely glad we finally chose an upgraded wooden door with glass panels rather than a vintage rustic barn door, which was the original plan for that space. The door we chose looks wonderful, lends itself to a more modern feel, and prevented us from having to suspend an old vintage door from a track on the ceiling, which is cumbersome and would definitely have resulted in frustration, arguments, and higher costs (for the track and hardware) I appreciate how cut and dry this choice of door was and how easily it was stained etc. (thank you painting crew). As far as lighting goes, we're grateful for so many recessed lights as well as our wonderful sconce, located next to our glass paneled door, which gave us serious headaches, but proved to be worth it in the end! (Awesome idea Jon! The sconce looks terrific!)

The next step, after our flooring installation, includes painting a couple large items for the playroom and living area, styling Clara's built-ins, and finalizing a creative art gallery wall for the playroom, which I've been working on for over a year now, and have no idea where I'm going to put it. I've already laid out everything else in my mind and can't wait to see it brought to life, even if Clara's a little too young to appreciate how artistic and creative I've striving to make it.

It's nothing but work work work around here as Clara learns a couple of awesome life lessons about the value of patience while waiting "patiently" for her wonderful playroom to be finished! "That's ok, I'll just play in the living room while I'm waiting..."

Overall, we're over the moon about the basement renovation and we can't wait until the flooring is installed and are extremely excited about decorating and blogging about everything!!

Hope this has been an amazing week so far!

Thanks so much for visiting! God Bless!

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!