Basement Redo

We never knew how nice basements were until we moved here to Maryland 8 years ago. Neither Jason nor I had grown up with a basement but they are pretty common out here in Maryland. Even though ours was unfinished, it was a space that we used quite a bit and was a lifesaver when it was raining or snowing outside or when the kids were getting too loud and needed to work off some of their endless energy. Our basement also housed our home gym, a little playroom area and a lot storage items too.

As much as we have enjoyed our unfinished basement, we wanted to turn it into a more usable space for our family. We had a vision of making it a fun "hangout" spot for the whole family. We contemplated briefly the idea of hiring out the work to a contractor to finish the entire basement but the price tag was WAY too steep for us (like $40,000 steep!). So we decided instead to do a "redneck" basement re-do all on our own and we were very pleased with how it turned out (and at about 10% of the cost of a contractor finished basement too!)

Jason took almost two weeks off around Christmas and New Year's which is when most of the work for this makeover took place. Our first major undertaking was to paint the ceiling black. We had seen a lot of pictures online of exposed painted basement ceilings and we really liked them. Kind of an industrial-style look if you will. Painting it black helps to hide all the pipes/wires/junk up there but still gives you access to everything unlike drywall and neither of us really likes the look of a drop-down ceiling for that space. Plus painting it was a whole lot cheaper! Not only did we paint the entire basement ceiling ourselves, we painted it with a roller and brush! I am sure a paint sprayer would have been a whole lot faster and easier, but I was concerned about fumes and overspray so we chose to do it the REALLY hard way. Plus it was cheaper (do you sense a theme here?) It took us about a week to finish the painting of the ceiling and we just couldn't believe how much better it looked.

We knew that painting the ceiling black plus the fact that there are only two small windows in the basement would really darken the space. So Jason went to work rewiring the whole basement and installing lots of recessed lights up in the beams. I was a little worried that he would electrocute himself, but I am happy to report that he is still very much alive, thank goodness. The recessed lights look amazing and so much better than the lightbulbs that were just hanging out up there. We were sure to use all LED lights too so that we wouldn't overload the circuit.

We hung inexpensive flat sheets around the perimeter walls in order to cover the insulation and give it the appearance of painted walls. I think eventually we will frame these out, but for now it gives it a more finished appearance without the time and cost of building real walls.

We did have a space by our step-down playroom that was already framed so we decided to finish off the walls in this area. Here are the before pictures of this space...

That little doorway leads into a storage crawlspace where we have a lot of our food storage plus holiday decorations, baby items that I just can't get rid of yet, and clothes the kids have outgrown.

Here is that same space after Jason put up drywall, taped, mudded and painted it!!

I just LOVE this new area for our home gym now. I added a few decor items, printed out some inspirational quotes and pasted them onto black canvas, and I use that storage unit under the wall-mounted TV to store my exercise books and videos.

Here are some other shots of the home gym area...

We already had some of this grey rubber flooring but added some more to expand the gym space and make it go wall to wall. I really love coming down here to workout now!

Here are the steps leading down into the basement. They were just wooden, unfinished steps so we added some moudling and painted them white. Then we added some grey stair runners so they wouldn't get too dirty with all those little feet running up and down them everyday. We also painted the walls grey (love grey!!), painted the handrail white, and added baseboards around this area to finish it off.

On the other side of the gym is the play area. Notice the sheets hung around the walls. Much better than the exposed silver insulation look we had before. We also had most of this rubber rainbow flooring but we bought a few more packs of it to expand that area and make it go wall to wall.

Here is the family room next to the play area. Jason finished off that previously only framed out section of wall on the left side then we just hung curtains for the rest of the space. We got a great deal on this grey sectional couch at Costco and we love that we can all sit on here to watch movies together.

I told Jason if we could paint the entire basement ceiling in a week, that he could pick out a new TV for the basement. Boy was that some great motivation!! We've only ever really had hand-me-down TVs from my sister so Jason was excited to pick up this really nice flatscreen 4K TV for his sports-viewing pleasure!!

I found this table at a consignment store. It was a light oak color so I painted it black and we use this for our gaming area. We love to play games together as a family and this table easily fits us all plus a few extra people too!

On the back wall of the basement, Jason framed it out and then used thick plywood to create our own indoor rockwall.

It's awesome and all the kids love climbing it together and with their friends!

So that's a little glimpse into our basement makeover. It was fun working on this with Jason and now that it's done, we find ourselves hanging out down here almost every evening.

Our vision of a family "hangout" finally realized!!