Room for More: Basement project

No, the boys are not in their new room yet. Krassimir has been upgraded from his spot behind the living room couch to his own bed set up in the basement playroom amidst bags and boxes of his and Owen's stuff. Owen continues to sleep wherever he lands each night - sometimes up in Grandma's front room recliner, sometimes on the couch in the living room, and then there are nights like tonight when he's sleeping in the "beaver lodge" that he built with Rinnah and Evania this afternoon.

But we ARE making progress.

In an effort to get the carpet squares down, Matt decided the most effective way to move the piles of painted wood was to build the shelves they were intended for. In the blue corner is the access to the well pump up high near the ceiling. Because one of our number one design rules is make every decision intentional, and make things look like you meant for them to look that way, instead of just having a soffit at the ceiling with an access panel, we instead built a bump that goes all the way to the floor and holds a built-in bookshelf. The upper shelf will be removable so if we ever do need to get in and service the pump, a few screws will take care of it. At all the other times, it's just a great place for Owen to put something on display.

And in Owen's bed cubby, the space under the stairs was a little wider than necessary for his mattress, so we furred out the back wall a little more than we needed to in order to make room between the stud spaces to put some shelves for bedtime reading material and an alarm clock (or five, with the way this boy [doesn't] wakes up in the morning). The wood back of these shelves is the original wood planks that separated the front half of the basement from the back half. Matt sanded it and gave it a fresh coat of clear coat, and it looks even better in real life than the photo shows.

In the above photo, Matt's got knife in hand just getting started cutting the first few carpet squares (you can see the first one installed right by his left elbow.) The room is probably 90% carpeted (the closet 0%) by now, but I don't have a photo.

Once we get all the carpet laid in the bedroom, we can move the boys' bunk bed into the room. That will get Krassimir into his bedroom, and Owen could choose to sleep on the top bunk until we get the base cut for his bed platform.

I'm starting to get itchy for starting the bathroom remodel/addition that's on the agenda for this summer. Someday we've got to get to the end of the major home projects, but it doesn't seem like that's coming any time soon! We know that our garage is slowly sinking, and will eventually need to be torn down and replaced...but one step at a time. This summer a basement bedroom and a handicap accessible entrance and bathroom will be sufficient, I believe!!

***UPDATED PHOTOS***

I got down and took some photos of the carpet earlier today:

Just a few bits around the perimeter that still need to be installed.

A closer shot of the finished shelf and the hole it will fill. These two are backed with leftover cherry flooring from Grandma's upstairs room in the west addition.