Basement Update

When we bought our house last year, this is what our basement looked like (old homeowner's furniture and all):

I knew the ugly paneling in the basement would have to go -- or at least it needed to disappear. Interestingly, Matt actually liked the wood paneling. He thought was appropriate for a man cave - made it feel rustic and cabin-like. Really? Gross. Plus the drop ceiling did not help the look at all.

I am actually all about this space becoming a Man Cave. You know, one with an awesome bar, giant tv, pool table and a cozy fireplace?!?! Unfortunately, all that coolness would require a bit of cash. Plus the one thing we had going for us in the basement, our wood-burning stove, was inspected back in December and we found out it we probably should replace it. Bummer.

We knew replacing the stove wasn't something we wanted to tackle yet, so the Man Cave dream was put on hold and we moved on to plan B. So, off to Home Depot I went for some oil-based primer, a.k.a. the smelliest paint available. We had actually already tried to use some oil-based primer in the downstairs bathroom for trim but it was soooo smelly that I couldn't finish the job. (I did put a coat of white latex paint over this section though, just didn't prime and paint all the trim in that room.)

Basement bathroom

But despite the smell, I knew painting was the best option to get rid of the ugly brown wood. Taking off the paneling was ruled out because we think the house was constructed with the paneling so there might not be drywall behind it. Dry walling was not a project we wanted to tackle! So what did I do to get rid of the smell?

Onions. I researched online and a couple people mentioned placing an onion in a bowl with a little bit of water. When you leave the onion out overnight in the room that you paint, the onion soaks up all the stinky oil-based primer smell. And guess what?!?! It worked! Matt thought it made our whole house smell a bit onion-y, but i'll take that smell any day over the terrible primer smell. Thankfully we only had to put one coat of primer on.

This was definitely a team project. I kicked it off by doing a lot of the priming while Matt was working one Saturday. But since we had to prime and paint (x2) the paneling plus paint (x2) the walls, there was plenty of work left for us to do together.

We decided to go with grey for the walls. Our house is a split-level so the basement actually gets a lot of sunlight since it's only halfway underground. We thought the combo of grey and white would make the basement look more modern, fresh and clean. And the natural light would help the basement not look too dark with the grey on the walls.

One of the gross-est parts of the project was finding spider nests under the baseboards in the cracks between the panels. I didn't actually find any spiders, just their webs but ewwww. We got some super-powered bug spray so hopefully they will stay away. I didn't snap a picture of them, instead you get one of me priming and painting the baseboards in the garage.  

Good thing Matt got those saw horses for Christmas. :)

And here's the finished paint job! Doesn't it look so classy. I was extremely proud of our work when we finished.

We let the paint dry and the room air out for a couple days before we moved the furniture down. Then we waited a couple more days because we had to wanted to wait for our new living room furniture to arrive before we moved the sofa and loveseat downstairs. Here's what the basement looks like now.

I don't think the room looks as nice and classy with the furniture in it. But we weren't going to buy two new furniture sets so the basement gets the leftovers. I do think it looks way better with white and grey walls than the ugly brown paneling and white walls. And I think I'm going to go on the hunt for new pillows. Here's a view from another angle.

 Yes, getting a more appropriately sized tv for the basement is on my list of wants. And on my list of to do's is to hang up some art on the walls. We bought a set of 3 8x10 frames from Ikea that I think will look good but we just need to figure out what pictures we want to put in the frames.

And we need to return the mounted pheasant back to it's spot in the corner. For the amount that Matt paid to get that little guy mounted, we should be displaying it instead of accidentally hiding back behind the stove. 

And I need to reorganize the other items in that area too. I'm a pretty big fan of the chest - I bought it for Matt at a Pheasant Forever auction that he took me to. (If he's going to make me go to a PF banquet, then I'm going to drink. And once I've got a few drinks in me, then I might as well have a little fun by winning him his bday gift. I had no idea that you get such an adrenaline rush when bidding in an auction.)

Also, from these pics it looks like we only put up one set of the blinds. I better go double check on that, since I'm pretty sure Matt bought a set for both sets of windows. 

If you're still reading this, I'm impressed! This was a super long post (which is why it's taken me so long to actually get this written and posted) and the project took awhile to come together too. But it definitely looks 50 times better! And I've actually used this room since we made all the changes, whereas I never used the basement before the paint job. 

So a quick before, during and after....

Before

During

After