I’m on my pre-maternity leave (my company gives us the 4 weeks before our due date off), and instead of being a normal person and relaxing or doing things that are helpful to prepare for the baby, I decided to use this time to finish a bunch of house projects. For instance, I really hated our basement family room. My goal was to make it into a more usable, cozy space. I was on a tight budget and Joey told me that he couldn’t help me at all, because he is really busy at work. He also was against me using any power tools without his supervision, which is fair, because I’m pretty clumsy as it is. Add pregnancy into the mix, and it’s not safe. So I was pretty limited in what I could achieve. That’s why I’ll call this a work in-progress, but it’s so much better than how it originally started.
Here is the listing photo to compare. They used a wide angle lens, which is why the room looks a little bit smaller now.
So you can see, nothing was terribly wrong with the basement, but it just was giving me very bland vibes. And I don’t love the gray color, which is actually the same color that our entire house was painted. Joey loves it, but I personally think it’s kind of depressing. But I didn’t feel like painting the entire basement while pregnant, so I thought a wall treatment might be a nice option. However, if you remember, Joey gave me strict instructions to stay away from most power tools. Luckily, Amazon came to my rescue. I found some beadboard wallpaper that had great reviews, and I knew it was exactly what the space needed. It honestly looks like real beadboard and I added some trim on top to make it look even more legit (I got sign off from Joey to use the handsaw and the nailer gun for that portion of the project). I originally planned on doing the entire basement with the wallpaper, but I decided to tone down my aspirations and stick to a feature wall, where our TV and faux built-ins sit. It’s pre-pasted wallpaper and I read all the Amazon comments to get some tips on how to best install it. It’s not perfect, but it honestly looks better than I expected. I might still end up doing some other rooms in the basement with it because I think it cheers things up a bit.
The TV is a 55″ frame TV that I got on super deal for Black Friday. It was my gift to myself. It came with a red Bezel, which is not my style at all, so I might end up painting it eventually.
The faux built ins are the Ikea HÄLLAN cabinets. We had some in our old attic that moved with us and because of height constraints in our old attic, we didn’t install the legs, which is why they look a little different that you see on Ikea’s website. I think it works to be on the shorter side anyways, so I wasn’t too upset having them sit on the floor. But they do have sharp edges on the bottom, so I wouldn’t recommend this approach if you don’t have carpet. Also, in order to fit this little niche, I had to order 3 more that we originally had. They arrived this week, and the measurements were perfect. I might add in some trim pieces eventually to make it look 100% built in, but right now it looks good enough.
You can see that some of the cabinets have locks. We store things like craft paint and tools that are little dangerous in those cabinets, so it’s really nice to have that layer of security.
Eventually, I think I want to switch out the rug. The pink is a little overwhelming. Also, my longer term vision is to have fancy waffle carpet in the whole basement. Plus I don’t love the little black settee, or the drapes, but overall, I’m happy with this phase one makeover that I completed while 38 weeks pregnant.