The electricians are here today! Yay! This is the first step in finishing our basement. We will have three new rooms instead of one big concrete block walled room. The front section will be divided into a large family room where we can watch movies, read, and play games by a log fire. We tend to spend a lot of time here in winter and it has formerly been a pretty dingy, depressing place to spend so much time.
We are adding outlets and rewiring the lights so that each new “room” will operate on its own switch instead of all the lights everywhere operating on two switches.
I found a great batch of white beadboard cabinets on craigslist and drove to get them yesterday.
The cupboards will go in a small work room on the same side of the basement as the family room, and be a sort of walk-through between the family room and Jesse’s office. This little room will house all those cupboards, a countertop and a work table. We can do all the printing, collating, and mailing for Jesse’s work there, as well as store the family’s art and sewing supplies, and extra school records and such – and – the most exciting part (to me, at least) is the Gift Wrapping Center I will build. Check this out:
This is one of several photos I found online to help me figure out how to build a space that will make gift wrapping much more pleasant a task. We currently store all our paper, bags, and bows in several boxes under my bed, and we often sit, huddled on the hard floor, scrunched over, knees aching, cutting, wrapping, taping things. The need for a wrapping job to be done is often met with much procrastination and gritted teeth. It will be so nice to have everything hung or in drawers or baskets, close at hand. And the luxury of a countertop or table to wrap on! Aaah! Heavenly. I’ll admit I’m pretty spoiled to get such luxury! I think it will be a fun challenge to take these cabinets and retrofit them to work in the space we’ll have.
The remaining space in the basement will not be finished off. It will still sport concrete block walls and weird, surface mounted outlets at odd heights. But we will paint – probably a cheerful, energizing yellow, and put all our exercise equipment in that new space. We currently have to remove lamps from side tables, move toys, unplug lamps to plu in the treadmill, and dodge support poles when we’re trying to work out along with a yoga DVD or something like that. It will be a pleasure to just be able to jump on the treadmill or lay out the yoga mats when we’re ready to go.
I hope this will be fun. It’s a huge undertaking, and we’re having a lot of help from a local builder putting the walls up. That will make it smoother, but still, the kids and I will be doing a lot of painting in the three rooms, and I anticipate that the whole cabinet/workspace project will take a lot of time and effort.
But seriously, who starts a renovation project at Christmas? Really!