“We moved into our home 7 years ago with the funds and time to makeover the basement. It was a finished space when we purchased the house, but it was moldy and had asbestos tile. After professionals tore our basement to the cement walls, abated the asbestos and mold, and waterproofed our basement’s foundation, we moved into our home. In the past seven years, we have used our funds to take care of family emergencies and raise our three children. Now we are bursting at the seams and need to get our basement in a state of functionality, not funk.
It is currently our storage space for everything and anything, including my ‘one day’ furniture projects. We are hoping to make half of our basement into a fully functional living space for our family without hanging a single piece of drywall. A finished, unfinished space, if you will. In the past month, we have repainted the walls and are currently laying Dricore over our cement floor. We need to finish our flooring with underlayment and faux wood planks, then onto draperies and (fingers crossed) a playroom under the stairs for the kids! We have a lot to do, but have high hopes that the challenge will give us the motivation to get it all done.+ ~Christine
BEFORE
AFTER!
BEFORE
AFTER!
BEFORE
AFTER!
What She Did
“This challenge has been the most rewarding and challenging one yet! Although completing everything on my ‘to do’ list would be impossible in the span of 31 days, we accomplished a lot and I declare this challenge a victory for our family. We’ve been working away on the basement for years, but with no real progress. Since Thanksgiving of 2014, we have cleared most of the clutter (yippee for Goodwill donations and tax deductions) and prepped the floors and walls. Before this challenge begun, we painted the walls “Silver Jade” by Behr (Basement and Masonry Waterproofing paint) and started to lay Dricore as a subfloor over our damaged, tile-adhesive ridden concrete foundation.
For this challenge, my husband and I demolished a few old walls, finished installing the Dricore subfloor, added foam floor underlayment, installed free-floating, faux wood, laminate planks, a ton of purging, and some furniture rearranging.
The biggest difference in this room is the flooring. Although it is still an unfinished basement (no drywall, no ceiling treatment), the flooring has made a huge impact, as it provides an expansive, cohesive plain on which the rest of the room relies. Even just changing the color of the waterproofer on the walls has made the unfinished basement look less institutional and cold. All of our budget was spent on prepping the walls and floors, installing Dricore panels, and the wood laminate. The rest of the items in the room were thrifted, sifted, or gifted. We have quite a substantial hoard of “one day” furniture projects and items that we have accumulated over the years in the hopes that it could work in our finished space. Since we don’t have the budget, nor time for a bona fide finished basement, we took the steps to make it cozy and get the look and feel we wanted., just by using what we already owned. The result is by no means our dream basement, but it is so much nicer than the dungeon it was a few months ago. I actually find myself hanging out in the basement on a daily basis, just to enjoy it!” ~Christine
Man, this really looks like a basement where her whole family can just chill and relax! Great job, Christine!!!
Think you’d like to make over a room in your house? Join the next challenge HERE.
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