Project: Basement

Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful

Hazrat Inayat Khan

When I saw this quote, I knew it was perfect for this post. I never really understood people that move a bunch of times. I was always of the mindset that the place we build is the place we make our home. All the memories, all the life-moments, and all the projects… OH THE PROJECTS!

Nikki and I have had projects all our lives. Some were big, like totally renovating an old farm house, or finishing our current house after the high school shop project was over (another couple of stories amongst many…). Some were small, like putting up a couple of walls in the basement to keep the kids out of the work area, or building our kitchen table. We always seem to have something that needs to be done.

Like so many other people, our basement was a bit of a dungeon and we never gave it a lot of thought. As the kids got bigger, our house got smaller. It was time to take on a big project with this one.

The flooring was the first order of business. We really wanted something that would make the room feel a little bigger than it was. We wanted to do a ceramic tile of some type. The longer length of this type of tile really helped take your eye to the focal point of the wall as you walk down the stairs.

Next was the stone… and it was a big next. I love the puzzle pieces that a drystacked ledgestone offers. Its short, linear pieces, along with its rustic edges make for a very artistic finish.

Once the stone was done we needed to come up with something to cover the block walls. It was a bitter sweet moment. I, along with the help of others laid the block walls for the basement, so you can see all the imperfections that came along with learning on the job so to speak. You can also see where the kids grabbed trowels and gave a nice little shmear over the block.

Originally we had talked about using standard pine 1×6 boards and painting over them. When we went looking for ideas we found the boards we ended up using instead. They are sawn to roughly 3/8″ thick 1×6 boards that are pre-stained. When we did the math it was a much better deal than painting new wood. The other thing that was nice about it was they used a circular blade to cut the pine boards down, so every now and then the pieces had nice rustic looking saw marks in it.

Next was the nemesis of the project – the staircase. The original stair treads were MDF, or basically glued saw dust for lack of a better description. They had taken quite a beating throughout the years and definitely were not remodel worthy. We took them out and replaced with pine treads that Nikki stained. Although that part had a lot of reasons it was a pain, there was nothing harder to do than add the hand rails. Not being an expert by any stretch of the imagination, it was the most difficult to get right. The end results are spectacular, but it for sure tested our marriage 😂.

With the staircase done, and the hardest work behind us we only had some basic finishing to do. We made the door to the exercise area, and made a sliding door that we made look like a cabinet to hide the electrical panel. Once it was all done, we did some decorating and gaming. We got Mason’s marlin on the wall, and have been loving it ever since!