Basement/Craft Room Redo 1

This weekend I worked on our basement. Currently I use it for storage for all my craft adventures. When I want to work on something, I go downstairs, get what I need and bring it upstairs. This results in our dining room table looking like this....


Not good for family dinners and results in us eating in front of the TV way too much. It also leaves our main part of the house a perpetual mess. I would like to work in the basement, but it is "creepy" as my kids put it. Our basement suffers from a couple of particularly bad ailments. One is efflorescence. The other is "man cave". Efflorescence is a nasty condition where the water in the soil leaches through the wall and reacts to the chemicals in the bricks and wicks to the surface. It leaves salt crystals on the outside of the walls. It looks really bad, but is just salt. The problem is that you should not paint the walls cause this can cause the crystals to form on the inside of the walls thus weakening the foundation. Yuk.


This is an actual picture of the wall, bad isn't it. It does not smell, it is not harmful, but who really wants to work in this kind of room. Also note the dark green walls. The previous owners painted the entire basement hunter green. With fish wall paper borders, dark light blocking curtains, and other assorted bachelor touches. Great choice for a one hundred year old basement. Not. (I really need a sarcasm button) Anyway, I want to lighten things up and have a couple of positive things to work with. The ceilings have been finished with pine, but that is okay and the floors have light tan carpet, again not my favorite, but okay. As you will find out, I HATE carpet. There are a few pot lights, but these do not really give enough light to actually work with. My husband installed shelving along one wall which I love, very functional, but not very pretty.



Here are some other pics. The roll top desk is staying. It was a gift from my parents for my high school graduation. I also have a couple of other desks and storage pieces to work with.

So, what did I do this weekend. The family went to go see Despicable Me. Fun movie. I also started on some painting. I painted out the windows, which already helps immensely with the light issue.


I also took some bi fold doors that we had laying around the garage, cut them down and painted them. These were the best kind of doors. Free. I love junk day.


Here they are painted. I had the paint left over from a previous project in another house. You will be seeing a lot of green. I love green. Green is my favorite color (all shades except the hunter green in my basement). Although I think that these will look nice, please someone stop me before painting bi fold doors again. Took forever.

And yes these are being propped up by a sports car on blocks. We are classy people. Why do we have a car in the garage that does not currently run and is so totally inappropriate for Iowa winters. Because I like shoveling the snow off my car to take the kids to school? Because it is a great collectible car and will be worth millions someday? No. It is because my husband is an engineer. Not a mechanic, an engineer. He believes that he should be able to fix any problem that an inferior piece of machinery like a car has. He is an engineer. So it sits. It is a bit of a sore spot between us.