Evolution of the Bonus Room

Continuing our basement progress series...  

Here's the scoop on the evolution of the bonus room!

Let's go waaaaaayyyy back..

to 2015 when Gabe was patching the cracks in the foundation wall and sealing it with Drylok paint.

From the other direction in this cavernous space:

We partitioned out this space into a bonus room and a storage/utility room. The bonus room would eventually be almost a square, coming in around 12' x 13'.

September 2016, after our second child was born, we were working towards getting room footprints established. Here's a trippy photo looking from the bonus room towards the staircase and mudroom beyond:

By August of 2017 we had added stud walls, drywall, mud and tape. Here's Gabe working to close up the gap between the storage room and the bonus room (it can double as an extra guest bedroom):

Here, it's all closed in:

It will be getting a louvered door since the HVAC return is in that room and needs to be able to circulate.

Looking towards the doorway under the stairs, to the mudroom:

Not a whole lot was done in this room besides running electrical wires and plumbing through this room for years (why we had the ceiling open for so long) through the two substantial additions we did upstairs.

So that puts us in the year 2020, when we added vinyl flooring to the lovely concrete floors, simultaneously to the mud room. The first stretch, running from the mud room all the way through to the wall of the storage room on the other side:

It was a really interesting game of musical furniture:

Here you can see the louvered door to the storage room:

The door on the right leads to the downstairs bathroom. 

A really quick jog into the storage room for a sec to show the shelves that Gabe built this summer as well:

Moving on to the painting job in the Bonus Room:

Gabe was able to get a daybed on FB marketplace for half the price we were seeing it at Ikea. Score!!

Putting it together:

And then another favorite moment for me--seeing the exterior window be replaced! That thing was nasty! I'll let you in on a little secret--Gabe wanted to drywall over this window!! Granted, it's under the deck and lets VERY little light in. BUT, I just wouldn't have it! Gosh, I wish I would have gotten a close up of the nasty thing. It was not plumb, it did not have clear glazing and was not very efficient. Here's the hole where it once was:

Next is an after picture of the window combined with Gabe installing the last of the ceiling panels around one of the recessed cans:

Ahh....covering up all those wires and joists is such a welcome change!!!

There will be a trim detail to hide the panel seams, eventually.

Here I am painting the first coat on this interior door:

I would say less than half of the trim in this room is caulked and painted. So we have some finishing work to do!

The built-in's are almost all from Ikea. This bookcase, this bookcase, a bridge shelf, a desktop and a storage shelf (without its doors) acting as a partial base for the desk:

This is where I wanted to have a little bit of fun with before and afters!

Similar angle, before:

And another, after:

Similar angle, before:

One more comparison:

Similar angle, before:

And one last after pic:

We are very grateful for our new Bonus Room/Guest Room/Mommy Cave/Man Cave!!!

And that's a wrap, for now!

Evolution of the Mudroom/Kitchenette

With Gabe working his day job every other week, we were able to accomplish more on the house than we ever dreamed!  Honestly, I had felt like the house to-do list was impossibly long and didn't think we'd get near as much done on the basement as we did.

First, let's talk about the mud room. The vision was to create a space that functions as a mudroom and a kitchenette so that when we have visitors down there, for a night or two or a short term stay, they can have a little bit of independence and privacy. We want to provide countertop space, a microwave and functioning sink. There is a fridge/freezer right outside the basement door in the garage as well.

We can start with a look down memory lane at we found the space in 2014 (after the furnace had been moved to the other end of the house--one of the first things we did when we bought the place in 2013):

The furnace would have been next to the door to the left

Let's go through the evolution of the mud room.

From the get-go, we had a large open basement space split up by this staircase that came straight down. Near the end of 2015, we worked to turn the staircase so that we could enclose a sizable bedroom in that area, with the stair entry and discharge shooting straight towards the basement/garage door.

More efficient, see?

In mid-2016, Gabe moved the water heater to the other side of the basement, to be enclosed in a utility room:

An old freezer was put in its place for temporary. Always nice to have extra freezer space!

As it can be seen, we housed our washer and dryer down partially behind the stairs. It was down there until around August 2018, when we had built a space for it upstairs in the hallway next to the master bedroom.

Before (10/2016) and after (9/2017) the doorway to the bonus room was built:

By Thanksgiving of 2016, we had moved downstairs to the basement bedroom and it would serve as the master bedroom until our major addition was done (we moved in to our new addition master bedroom Thanksgiving of 2018!) Zoe was downstairs in that room with us. It was a blessing that the room was large enough for all of us to be in there comfortably. We went from a 10'3" x 12'9" bedroom space to a 12'6" x 16'6" size room!

From the doorway of the mud room looking into the finished space:

Back to the mudroom.

It remained unfinished though, for quite some time! Through our major additions upstairs, from the end of 2017, through spring of 2020, we basically did nothing in the mudroom, besides infrastructure like plumbing and electrical which are hard to photograph into something meaningful :)

Finally, in the spring of 2020, when Gabe had some time off due to the Coronavirus pandemic shutdown, we had an opportunity to tackle the space and get it up to speed.

Here's the mudroom in March 2020, in all it's red lights and baby chick housing glory:

Not to mention housing (more or less organized-ly) shoes!

First order of business is to get the extremely heavy slop sink out of the space so we can drywall the back wall (he had already managed to put polystyrene behind for insulation).

Gabe keeping all the plumbing straight--I don't know how he does it!!

The metal base the sink sits on crumbled under the weight of the sink--thankfully it didn't land on my toe! --as we managed to set the thing on its side to get it outta there:

A little sweetie posing in front of the newly framed wall:

Another cutie "helping" daddy attach drywall to the stud wall:

Apparently I didn't get too many pictures of the process of insulating, drywalling and mudding the space. Here's one awkward one, and you can see some of the constant shuffling around of the furniture and tools in there until the flooring was down and cabinets were in to house all the things that were in there that needed storing.

We did the next part slightly out of order--we put vinyl planks down first and then painted. Chalk that up to my impatience to see how the flooring would transform further what had once been a dingy, dark, dank little intersection of a space!

Flooring going down as shown on the sink wall:

Panning right, you can see how Gabe handled the framing of the doorway/hall under the stairs:

First he put a header in under the stairs and cut away the triangular part that was jutting down into the walkway. There is a slight bulkhead in the ceiling where the supportive header comes down and panels cover it (the ceiling panels/trim are not entirely finished).

Stairs wall:

And then paint!

And then looking at the wall to the right, the door to the guest room:

Panning to the right again, looking at the wall adjoined to the garage:

We painted some panels to stick up on the ceiling:

Here's where it gets really fun! I have been staring at this UGLY window for a long time (over 5 years!) and it's super inefficient energy-wise. SO, imagine my excitement to get to REPLACE it!!!!  YAY!!!

Remember?

From the outside, before the deck covered it up:

It's not even glass--it appears to be some sort of shoddy plexiglas that will never fully clean off it's been scratched so much.

YESSSSS!!!!

Woo hoo! And that embarrassment of cords and wires in the upper left corner are our ethernet connections and routing for the entire house. Once Gabe wired the outlet that will go up in that corner, they will get neatly tucked inside a wall cabinet, as soon as we get it (it was backordered a few days).  You can also see the panels installed on the ceiling--just know the seams will be covered with a trim detail, in time, in time.

We picked up our cabinets, from our contractor friend who got them cheap from a wholesaler, in August (all except the backordered one), all for less than $1500. We had a few cabinets we re-used from the kitchen we tore out upstairs, but honestly, the base cabinet we were really counting on wasn't savable. Back in the throes of our major additions it was left out in the garage when we'd had a few floods in there before the drainage was taken care of properly. The cabinet got all warped and moldy on the back. So, it will be used in my pottery studio shed someday, but until then, we got a new base cabinet instead.

It's plain to see that we mis-aligned the cabinets and window, so that was a bit of a bummer. It will become more clear when the sink and faucet are in place on the sink base. I kept telling Gabe throughout the project down there whenever he'd fuss over some detail, "it's just a basement!" so we could get a move on and now, after I have harped on the mis-alignment, he likes to remind me of my statement, "it's just a basement!" Oh well. You live and learn. And you learn to live with your mistakes.

We bought a 12' walnut butcher block sheet at Lumber Liquidators mid-August and gave it a quick cut at 5' to transport it and will cut off the excess when Gabe's ready for the final install. For now, they are just resting on the surface, accumulating tools and junk. It will be a wider opening for circulation through to the bonus room, in time, in time.  The walnut butcher block choice is intended to be a more cost conscious nod toward the materials we have upstairs without upstaging them. I think it will come out beautifully once it's oiled and sealed up.

In the picture looking down the hall to the bonus room, you can see the slight drop in ceiling to accommodate the support piece that enabled Gabe to cut out part of the stairs.

Here's a little better picture of what the closet under the stairs looks like:

Looking back towards the door to the garage we installed a bench, some hooks and shelves:

This bench, Gabe worked to give a built-in look. Eventually, I'd like to replace or recover the cushion since white in a mud room is proving to be a baaaaad idea. The wall mounted shelf and hooks were not a matching set with the bench, but I think they marry nicely. The chrome hooks might get some spray paint at some point, but for now that's not high enough on the priority list.

Gabe installed some of the under cabinet lighting as well. One of the overhead can lights is flickering so we took it out and it's nice to have a bit more light on the subject! The sink will go right there in the middle and the bar with hooks will hold the fake herbs from Ikea :)

It's coming together!

And one more with the rug I bought! It's jute and should hold up nicely to the dirt and mess of a mudroom. The color is pretty homogenous to the flooring, but it doesn't bother me and feels like a subtle design touch without being showy. I am going to add cobalt accents to the space in the form of my pottery from college that have been in storage for waaayyyy too long ;)

You can see that the last panel that was missing on the ceiling above the shelves is now in place.

Gabe had to go back to work abruptly at the beginning of September so our plans to finish the countertop slowed down considerably.

First, Gabe filled a few small voids in the butcher block countertop with black epoxy. Then he sprayed them with shellac. Lastly, he painted on the polyurethane coating and they took up space in the garage for a week or so:

Did I mention we got baby chicks?

To say the kids are enamored would be an understatement ;)

Next, Gabe cut the hole for the sink:

And dropped it in!

You can see how wonderful the walnut looks here.

Getting the sink faucet and water hooked up were the next order of business:

We sorta buggered up the caulk around the sink by waiting to long to wipe it off the surface of the wood, so it's going to take some time to figure out what product to use to get it off, besides painstaking fingernail scratching!

I also requested the hooks bar to be installed so I could add some greenery to the space and liven it up from all the white on white on white!

There's still handles to install, light switch plates to install and ceiling trim to finish, but it's usable and very handy for when we need to wash hands after handling the chickens. Goodness, there are a lot of uses that come in handy that we took for granted when we were without a slop sink down there for a couple of months!

Not completely finished, but good 'nough for now!

One more close up of the chicks now they've matured a few weeks:

Their names are Maple, Flower, and Lacey, from left to right.

There are more projects accomplished this past summer that will be detailed in separate posts. 

And that's a wrap for the progress in the mud room!