The Basement - Part 1

Of all the projects we undertook with this house, the basement renovation was easily the biggest. 

Here's a reminder of where we started (see this post for more details about the original basement): 

Concrete floors, a janky staircase, and cinder block walls. In short, not exactly a place you'd want to spend a lot of time, unless you're a serial killer.

The basement had great potential though, and I knew it could serve a lot of different functions for our family, which it does. 

The door leading to the basement stairs is in our kitchen, which makes it very convenient: 

We completely re-built the stairs so that rather than having that 90 degree turn as you see in the picture above they are straight. This required a lot of super boring stuff, such as moving the furnace and water heater as well, but the end product turned out great:

The Tastee Inn & Out print was a fun purchase at the fundraising silent auction for Junior League of Lincoln, and I love it very much. Sadly, the Tastee in Lincoln went out of business a couple of years ago, but the one in Sioux City is still going strong as far as I know! And now I'm suddenly craving onion chips and dip :) 

The open door you see at the bottom of the stairs leads to my craft room. It's a nice big room, but it was in major disarray when I took these photos, so no pics of that room today! It is painted this super fun Benjamin Moore color (All A Blaze) - it's intensely bright, and I think it's perfect for a creative space:

Most of the basement is done in this fun grey patterned carpet:

It's a fairly flat weave and I like that it has some pattern and interest without being too crazy. 

Looking to the right from the bottom of the stairs, there's a hallway:

The doorway on the left leads into the bathroom, and the doorway on the right leads into the storage room.

The bathroom turned out really great; in fact, it's one of my favorite spaces in the whole house:

In particular, I love the encaustic concrete tile in shades of grey and white. It turned out so pretty!

I went a little more modern with the fixtures in this bathroom, which was fun:

We included a nice-sized shower (no tub) in this bathroom as well, so we could easily host overnight guests in the basement, or provide a nice place for slumber parties when E is a little older.

The storage room is nothing special, but I'm including a picture of it here just to show the size, as well as the nice shelving our contractor put in for me:

It's an L-shaped room, so the other leg of the L has our furnace, as well as a spot for our deep freeze and a few other miscellaneous storage items. Out of the total 1800ish square feet in the basement, we kept about 350 unfinished for storage, which I think is about the right amount.

Okay, back out into the hallway to the left of the bottom of the stairs is this view:

First, the bar area:

It's configured like a galley kitchen, with everything but a stove. There's a full-size refrigerator on the right, a dishwasher, and a wine fridge below the counter, as well as a bar sink. 

The bar front was designed by me and executed by our wonderful contractor. I knew I wanted to include corrugated metal for an industrial look, and I really like the juxtaposition of this material with the more refined wood.

All cabinetry, the bar, and the wine racks were custom-made for the space and I'm very, very happy with the craftsmanship. There's tons of storage space in this area, which has been the best thing ever. It is SO NICE to know that I have several empty cabinets and drawers that I can use for storage when needed. 

It's also great having a second refrigerator that is basically empty (except for soda and beer). It came in super handy when we hosted E's birthday party here last weekend, and I imagine it will be used a lot for holidays and other parties as well.

The floor is a grey wood-look ceramic tile, and the counters are poured concrete. I left the concrete finish raw so that it would weather over time. I have always loved concrete counters, and while I don't think they are ideal for a kitchen, in a basement bar I thought they were the perfect choice.

The nine-clock piece on the wall is a vintage find, that I think is just so cool:

HOWEVER, of the 9 time-zones included, not one is Central! Which means every time I want to know what time it is, I have to do math like a busta. 

Well, that ended up being a really long post with a lot of pictures, so I think I'm actually going to split this basement reveal up into two posts. Next time, I'll show the family room area, game room, and exercise room. Here's a little sneak peek in the meantime:

Thanks for reading!