1 The Before The "before" of our basement was one big messy storage room. Because of the placement of things (the well stuff, furnaces, electrical box, etc.) along with the fact that half the basement isn't dug out to full height, it took us several years of pondering before we came up with what we thought would be the best way to finish it. We wanted to turn most of the basement into a combination playroom/toy and home theatre/TV room where my dh could have the giant flatscreen TV he'd been wanting for years. We also wanted to build a real home office for him (since he works full time from home). We also wanted to reserve space for a workshop area and an exercise room, and we wanted to keep some storage area as well. We would have loved to have a powder room, but there simply wasn't room. (There would have been, had the builder opted to dig out the whole basement instead of just half of it, but oh well.)
2 The plan Based on our ideas, my sister, who is an architect, drew up several different versions of floorplans. We opted to go basically with this one, though we changed the furniture layout and placement of the door into the workshop.
3 Inspiration room at IKEA We weren't sure what we wanted as far as decor. The rest of our house is pretty strict "country farmhouse" with lots of antiques and cottage style decorating. I wanted something funkier and more modern for the basement but I wasn't exactly sure what. When we stumbled across this sample room while strolling through IKEA, we knew we'd found our basement. We blatantly copied the wall and floor colors as well as the entire entertainment center layout. While we didn't use the same furniture, we did end up furnishing the basement almost completely with IKEA furniture and lighting. Hey, you can't beat their prices!
4 So here it is -- the view looking down steps Before you decide that we are clearly colorblind, the paint is NOT THIS PURPLE! It's much darker (closer to the purple in the IKEA room), and the trim is a dark dark brown, almost black. The carpet is a butterscotch color. Unfortunately, the camera flash is washing everything out and making it all look scary-bad. It is definitely not this grapey purple in real life!
5 Standing at the bottom of the steps, looking right The shelves are from IKEA and serve as a console table as well as hold the kids' lego creations. Yes, that is the world's largest TV - my husband's dream come true.
The ceiling is still the unfinished joists which we spray painted a dark brown/almost black color - it gives the basement a very industrial loft/warehouse vibe, which is exactly what we wanted (plus it makes it much easier to get to plumbing/wiring when necessary).
There is no natural light down here at all, so rather than fight it, we decided to go for a dark "home theatre" kind of look. The purple paint is called "Expressive Plum" from Sherwin Williams and is much deeper than it looks in the pic.
Lighting consists of a mix of can lights between the joists and various IKEA light fixtures. "Great idea to keep the joists exposed & paint them a ..." View Comments...
6 Closeup of entertainment center We built the recess in the wall to exactly fit these cabinets, which are the Besta system from IKEA. The layout is identical to the one in our inspiration room. We are debating whether to put knobs or pulls on the doors or leave them plain (the ones with the handles are drawers that hold movies).
Funky track light fixture is the Radium from IKEA.
7 18 feet of sliding doors with chalkboard paint These doors hide a broom closet area and a wall of bins containing all the toys my children own. (Yes, they have way too many toys!)
We weren't sure what to do with these doors -- I had originally wanted barn doors built out of wood planks, but that turned out to be not very easy to do, so we ended up going with big MDF slab doors. We chose to paint them with chalkboard paint and I like how they came out. Artwork is courtesy of my daughter's birthday sleepover guests.
The silver panel in the door to the left covers the broom closet where the dehumidifier sits. The panel is perforated so air can flow to and from the dehumidifier, which is plumbed into a drain in the floor.
More Radium light fixtures illuminate the closet doors.
8 A view looking down the closet wall Double doors at the end lead to an unfinished "workshop" room that is still a big mess, so no pics of that area yet. The half-height crawl space is behind all the closets -- it is being used for storage and is accessible via the workshop area.
I'm debating whether to hang that clock on that wall or not -- putting that first hole in your new walls is so intimidating!
One of the red ottomans is completely busted, so they are just sitting there holding up the clock til I figure out what else to put there.
The gray mat on the floor is leftover rubber-mat flooring from the exercise room. The kids complained that the carpet was too lumpy to build Legos on and that seemed like a good solution.
9 Standing near the train table looking at the sofas There's a decent amount of seating here. We have a giant L-shaped sectional along the back wall and left side of this picture, and a loveseat toward the front. All the sofas are the Karlstad line from IKEA - they are cheap, sturdy, and surprisingly comfortable. We had to work around the support pole that holds up the first floor, which kept us from getting one giant U-shaped sectional. (You can't see the pole here, but it is just to the left out of the shot, at the edge of the loveseat -- you can see where it is in the floorplan picture).
We still need some artwork for over the sofa, but that huge wall is so intimidating and I don't know where to start. We also need a coffee table or ottoman or something for the center there -- I'd like to get something that can be quickly moved out of the way, as that is prime Wii-playing real estate.
10 Standing at the bottom of the steps again This is taken as if you came down the stairs and made a 180 degree turn to the right. The kids have a desk area along the stairway wall. I'm not sure whether to put shelves or something else above the desks. The doors on the left past the desks (you can barely see them in the pics) go to my husband's office.
11 Straight-on view of the desk area A straight on shot of the desk area. Like I said, I'm not sure whether to hang shelves or artwork above the desks. The wall is weirdly shaped because of the stairs, so centering is a problem - something centered over the desks is going to be off center on the wall, but if you center it on the wall, it's off center with the desks. Ack!
Desks are IKEA Micke units (2 desks and 2 drawer units). They hold the two tower PCs perfectly in the door compartments. The finish scratches easily, though, and it shows a lot of fingerprints. Chairs were trashpicked off someone's curb - I'd love to get some clear acrylic or black ones instead of the orange, but they work for now. Lights above the desks are from IKEA of course -- I think they're called Beryll or something like that. The support beam for the basement is annoyingly in the way and messed with the light fixture placement, but we did the best we could -- it's not this noticeable in real life. "I was going to just comment on how much I love the po..." View Comments...
12 View into the office Looking through the french doors into the office (the doors have frosted glass). DH works from home so he's in here for 8+ hours a day. All furnishings are from IKEA except the desk chair (Costco) and the desktop (plywood from Lowes). The whiteboard (from which my dh has photoshopped all his top-secret work notes) is an IKEA glass tabletop hung up with some super-heavy-duty mirror clips.
The white thing on the wall above the whiteboard is an electric heater from a company called Radiant Systems. It works like a baseboard heater, but it's up high out of the way. We have black ones mounted on the center beam in the main room as well, and they do a great job of keeping the basement warm all winter.
13 View of the desk The cabinets above are bath cabinets from IKEA. The frosted glass matches the french doors.
14 More frosted glass These are IKEA's Effectiv units - like the Besta system we used for the entertainment center, the Effectiv units are configurable in a million different ways. We used them to build 2 shelf units on the wall opposite the desk. The bottom drawers in each unit are slide out hanging file holders.
The Effectivs are surprisingly expensive for IKEA furniture but they are beautiful and hold a ton. (They're built like tanks, too, so I expect they'll last forever -- they aren't your typical particleboard IKEA bookcase.) We haven't hung the artwork yet, as you can see. Oh, the lamp table is from Target (yes, we actually shop somewhere besides IKEA, LOL!)
15 Printer closet Next to the desk (between the desk and the french door) is a tiny closet tucked under the stairs. We've turned it into the "server room" for the house - it holds the router, modem, printer, fax machine, extra paper, etc. All the network connections in the basement (for the kids' computers, office computers, and tivo) are hardwired into a network switch in this closet.
16 Exercise/Utility room A door to the left at the bottom of the steps leads you into the unfinished exercise/utility room. It houses our exercise equipment (treadmill, bike, weight bench) plus our extra fridge, file cabinet, shelves to hold bulk purchases from costco, and utility stuff like the well tank and furnaces.
I would have loved to wall off the exercise stuff into its own separate room, but there just wasn't room. We "floored" most of this room with this interlocking rubber mat flooring from Costco. The walls are unfinshed cinderblock painted with drylock and the ceiling is just the unfinished wood joists.
17 Exercise area We hung our own little dedicated TV for the treadmill/bike area. The TV and wall-mounted fan defintely make putting in the miles a more pleasant experience. The shelf on the wall holds water bottles/towels/books while exercising and is from (where else?) Ikea.
