With the basement, there were a few tricky areas to deal with. There were plumbing stacks, headers, and columns. We also have a crawl space, which runs along the back of our garage, and has the mud room above it. There are heating vents that run into the crawl space. It was a bit of an eyesore and also a terribly unhealthy thing to have in our basement, as it was full of dirt. Interestingly, the previous neighbours, who seemed to throw nothing away and left all kinds of bits and pieces behind, decided to roll up some old carpeting and put it in the crawl space, for us to deal with. You can only imagine the mould and bacteria in there. We had a vapour barrier put in there, and insulation, so no mould or cold air can get into our basement. We needed to be able to get into the crawl space, if necessary, but we also wanted to hide it.
Here is the crawl space, with the duct work, and a plumbing stack coming out.
The armoire was designed to maximize the amount of storage space inside, while hiding the crawl space and the stack. We have an flat inner section to the armoire, which can be tipped out by removing some screws. The bottom drawer is shallower, for the stack. A lot of people ask if we are putting a TV in the open area of the armoire. That area is reserved for some art that we can't yet afford.
The spare bedroom was a bit of a playroom before, but it was so humid down there, that we had to be careful that things didn't get ruined. The kids had made some playdoh figurines, and had let them dry out. The figurines ended up downstairs, and they re-constituted themselves!In the corner, is the electrical panel, as well as our old central vac. We had the windows replaced, moved the central vac to the garage, and the electrical panel is covered by a panel painted the same colour as the wall.
On the left-hand side of this 'after' photo, you can just make out the handles of the electrical panel. The other interesting challenge of this room was that it is beside the furnace. Since we upgraded to a furnace with a DC motor, there isn't any noise anymore, but there are a lot of ducts that come out right into the spare bedroom. The ceiling was going to be so low that we couldn't locate the closet under the back half of the room, as the type of door we chose can't be cut down. We decided to make the low ceiling as much of a feature as possible and located pot lights right above the night stands, and put the bed under the lowest part of the ceiling. I feel like it gives it a cozier feeling. The bonus is that the closet is between the bed and the playroom, giving even more of a buffer for noise.
And, finally, the TV room. I don't have any 'before' pictures because there wasn't anything to photograph but the walls. The TV room is located beside the bar, and you can see the bar half-wall on the left of this photo. We got our microfibre couch last week, as well as our TV. The couch is 8' 10" X 8' 10". Despite having drawn the whole thing out on graph paper before even buying the couch, I was shocked at how big it looked in the room. We got the Barcelona chairs from Costco months ago. DH and I hung the TV on the wall last weekend, and got an IKEA TV stand for underneath. With the rest of the furniture, the couch finally looks like it belongs.
Since I hate clutter, I love the fact that all of the components (DVD player, cable box, etc.) are behind frosted glass and the remotes work through the glass! All of the cords are hidden behind the TV or the TV bench, and we are really happy with how cozy and comfy this room feels.
We have a lot of the major pieces of furniture we will need. The accessories will have to wait until we save up some cash.
DH has set up a little music area downstairs and a future project will be to get a desk and some vertical shelving to house his components a little more neatly. We have a table, made my DH's grandfather, that we'll get repaired and re-vamped so we can use it as a games table and set it up right beside the armoire for easy access to the cards and puzzles. I can't wait to play euchre downstairs.
