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!

Basement Reno Update!

A couple of pics to remember where we started with the basement:

Yucky!  Look at the south basement wall after Gabe patched some cracks and power washed it:

And then this after painting:

And the stairs, as it were:

The first major step towards our basement reno is to "tweak" the orientation of the stairs.  The current orientation straight down will not work for the plans we have for the basement.  Here's an overview--we planned to put a landing three treads up and making a 90 degree angle towards the door to create a vestibule/mud room.  As you may or may not see in the floor plan below, there is a structural pole that is rather close to the stairs heading towards the door, and works better being tucked into a wall.  Having the stairs facing the entry is more ideal. The wall can then line up with the HVAC duct and cuts the space basically in half creating a bedroom space immediately off of the basement entry vestibule.  There will also be a bathroom adjacent that is accessible to the bedroom (kind of a master suite) but also available to the other large space that might become a partial guest room/rec room eventually.  The space created in the far right corner is leftover for utilities such as the HVAC, washer/dryer, water pump, etc.

Here is a shot after much of the work has been done to turn the stairs towards the entry door:

We sourced some floor boards and treads that match what we have going up the stairs:

What made this project somewhat complicated is that in turning the basement stairs below 90 degrees, we lost the requisite headroom required by code, 6' 8".  So Gabe made a platform for the fridge that came out from the wall about a foot and raised it up by about 4 inches.  Pas de probleme :)

This did create a small issue to solve once the fridge was back in place--being able to see behind the it.  So we plan on building a "privacy panel" that will extend along the edge of the counter blocking the view of behind the fridge (sorry no pic).

Moving on to the rec space:

Some fresh pallet shelves for some of our storage:

The shelves to the left of the above pic needed to be repainted and re-jigged a little bit, so Gabe took it upon himself to refresh them a bit:

And this is how they turned out:

Love the repurposed shelves!

I had an idea to hang a curtain up to hide the storage so it wouldn't feel so much like a storage space, so Gabe did this as well.  Here he is hanging the really long rod:

The "English yellow" hutch on the right that is partially seen in the picture has a story for another blog post :)

Additionally, I added a rug and a yard sale find book shelf for toys to make the space useable as a rec room for now.  Good for tae-bo practice too :)

Finished curtains (and a bunch more stuff in the room too!):

Moving right along to the other other planned spaces!!  First, we had to tackle the plumbing for the bathroom.  Back in Dec/Jan we hired out the job to the professionals after Gabe dug thru the concrete floor seen on the left:

 

This will facilitate the use of a new tub/shower, toilet and sink.  After a lot of hassle, the discontinued use of that particular plumber, and 2 failed plumbing inspections, the third time was the charm!  Then we were able to pour concrete over the opening:

We could then go whole hog on the framing, yay!

Before Gabe could start on the framing, he insulated the walls with a polystyrene panel (seen as the sky blue panel behind the framing in the above photo).  After he pulled the heavy things away from the wall (extra freezer and tool shelves), he started framing the walls in the bedroom:

Here is a good shot of the framed egress window Gabe replaced last fall:

But I can't show that without showing the before pic!!  It's pretty grimy looking:

This was back before we had painted the walls, yuck!

The new window is substantially bigger, and fulfills the code requirements for a window in a habitable space/bedroom.  This was an essential step if we ever want to be able to claim it as a bedroom later down the road when we sell.

Next pic displays the same corner as the photo before, all framed up!

  

Panning to the left, this is the wall that divides the bedroom from the bathroom:

Gabe is installing the bulkhead here, that will hide drains from the bathroom above.  Yes, the bathrooms are stacked for ease of plumbing.

With Gabe relatively in the same spot as the previous picture, the bathroom can be seen from the rec room space through the hallway (with the linen closet on the left):

In the leftmost portion of the photo is the corner that will house the water pump, water heater and potentially down the road, the washer/dryer.  Where Gabe is standing is roughly were the toilet will go.

Next, is a shot looking from almost the same vantage point, but more towards the bedroom:

One more shot of what we have so far looking from the bedroom out towards the basement entry:

Now, Gabe is working on the rest of the plumbing.  We splurged and got a water pump to replace the insufficient one we have now.  I will be so happy for better water pressure!!

Looking forward, these are the plans, tweaked and revamped a little:

A few things that have changed from the previous drawing.  The water heater was moved from the upper left hand corner of the drawing to the lower right hand corner and the washer/dryer was stacked in the water heater's old spot.  I took out a closet from the master bedroom design, since I thought it would be nice to have a little nook for a desk or a dresser or something.  Three closets in a master bedroom of a house this size might be a bit of overkill!  We tweaked the walls surrounding how we will manage our storage, closing in the storage on the west end of the rec room, creating a guest room of sorts.  It will be mighty small, but it will be something when we currently have nowhere for guests.  I haven't narrowed in on flooring for the bulk of the basement space, except for the bathroom, I have decided on some nice tile that I will detail in a later post once all the other materials and fixtures are selected!!

Until further adieu.... :)

2nd house Updates! Kitchen projects

Onward to the kitchen.

Last summer when I wrote, we had painted the kitchen cabinets, stripped & resprayed the handles and were working to lay a black and white checkered vinyl flooring tile.

Check out the upstairs floor plan from the last blog on the house here to find your way around.

A reminder of where things started for us:

Where we left off last time:

This was all before we moved in last July.  We were scrambling to "finish" the kitchen before moving in.  It was already functional, but we had gotten a dishwasher for free from a friend that we wanted to install next to the refrigerator on the opposite wall.  Also, the space had no existing pantry and I wanted to add a bit more storage too.  When all was said and done, we added a butcher block countertop, more cabinets, dishwasher, microwave cabinet, and pantry.

Here we go!  This is our process.

Some of the parts of the puzzle:

dishwasher laying on floor, 24" upright pantry and 24" base cabinet

Before beginning, Gabe had to do some creative work with electrical.  The existing outlet above where the counter was going to go was connected to the refrigerator, so adding a microwave to that wasn't going to be able to bear the load, so Gabe added another outlet/circuit nearby (ended up being hidden behind the microwave).  So before we could put the fridge back in it's spot, Gabe had to get all the electrical squared away.

Then Gabe moved the refrigerator back into its place in the corner:

Then a dry fit of the base cabinet and dishwasher in place next to the fridge:

And then dry fitting the butcher block countertop and pantry:

This really was a puzzle that just so happened to work really well.  The low profile pantry we already had, the countertop we bought was 4' long which worked with a standard 24" base cabinet and a 24" standard dishwasher.  The cool thing is that we had about an inch or two to spare along that whole wall :)

The butcher block was originally a table top that Gabe removed the legs from and gave it a good sanding and reinforcing of the individual slats.

The upper cabinets worked out too, because we already had the wall cabinet box from the first house project--we just needed to buy a door-so I decided to go with a glass door :)  And since we don't have as much countertop space to begin with, we decided to buy a microwave cabinet shelf, which fit nicely above the base cabinet.

Upper cabinets installed:

Then, Gabe worked to install and hook up the water line for the dishwasher that was going in.

Shown below, Gabe is almost done with the installation of the base cabinet and countertop support installation:

Also, the original outlet has been patched over because it fell right where the countertop was going and had to be moved up a few inches to be accessible once the countertop was secured in place.

Nearly finished, the kitchen, even though it isn't as much of an eat in kitchen still has an open feel to it.  A bistro table will eventually go under the window as an attempt at a partial eat in kitchen.  Around the corner from the pantry is the basement door, so there must be enough clearance to pass through comfortably.

Lastly, I bought handles like the ones we already had and spray painted them to match to bring cohesion from the old to the new.

It was at this point that we could move into the home because this was the last thing that needed to be done before we could do so.



Much later (months later) we were able to take the time to work on the backsplash.  This was a winter activity, since it would be solely an indoor job--not taking up valuable warm weather projects time.  I believe we tackled this around Thanksgiving break.

I had bought these a while back:

I somehow don't have too many in process pictures, but here is one:

The hardest part for Gabe was all the cuts he had to make with a utility knife around the cabinetry, outlets and exhaust fan:

And ta da!  I present to you the finished backsplash.  I like it!

I especially like this paired with the vintage stainless steel edged laminate countertops!  :)

And a detail shot:

we bought stainless steel outlet covers too

And, I don't know how I forgot to get a good before shot of the awful condition this exhaust fan was in before we spruced it up!

It was caked in many layers of paint and grime, so Gabe stripped the paint and sprayed it with a fresh new coat of paint and added new screen behind it as well.

I think this is a mighty fine transformation if I do say so!!

Additional shots of the fan:

And a view of the other side of the kitchen with the same backsplash tile to pull it all together:

And you can see that the countertop is all oiled up and ready to go with a walnut oil/butcher block oil to keep it from getting dried out.

The last update we made to the kitchen is the light fixture.  What we had was a ceiling flush mount fluorescent light.  This is the only picture I could find as a "before" pic of it:

This is what we came up with--a semi-flush mount light fixture with diffused ambient light for the kitchen:

Now to share a pic of the bistro table I bought for under the window in the kitchen:

The succulent plant stand is temporarily taking up space in the kitchen during the winter (so it doesn't die).  The table fits very well into this space--a perfect place to park and eat a quick meal in front of the window :)

Here is another view of the table, showing a little bit more context:

A corner of the pantry can be seen on the right as well as a door leading to the back yard.

The curtains on this window (and over the kitchen sink) I adapted from scarves that I bought at Pier 1 Imports.  For this one, I had a wide sheer curtain that I cut in half, hemmed one side, and attached the scarf at the top.  The only problem (that I still need to fix) is that even though I did both of the sheer pieces (seen behind the scarf) the same length, when they were both done and hung up on the window, I noticed that the scarves were different lengths...something I didn't consider as a possible problem initially, so I'm still scratching my head about how I might fix it.  Or I might just leave it because it's barely noticeable!!!! (but I notice..) :D

Moving around the corner for a closer look at the back door, you can see the curtains I made:

From the basement stairwell looking up:

This photo was taken from the top of the basement stairs looking into the kitchen:

You can see the profile of the bistro table from this vantage point.

For the curtain swag over the kitchen sink window I used the same scarf idea from the other window and had a sheer checkered (gingham-esque) curtain that I got that pairs up with the scarf swag quite nicely.  It is literally just draped over the curtain rod--nothin' fancy :)

Here are a couple more detail pics of the kitchen space--a few fresh herbs stayin' alive: basil and rosemary along with some beautiful roses from my sweet husband ;-)

Here's a pretty cactus flower by my sink that I got from a large community yard sale last spring along with some succulents chillin' on the sill:

Notice the condensation on the windows.  This is what single paned windows do.  Who knew?  It's absolutely gorgeous when it crystallizes in freezing temperatures and the morning sun hits it.  Yes.

And that is a wrap for the kitchen space!