{ New Basement Steps }

Mark replaced the stair treads to the basement a few weeks ago. So.Much.Better!

He made the last five steps longer too and I love it. I forgot to snap a pic right before he changed out the stair treads but here are a few pics that I had in my files and will give you a good reminder of what the stairs looked like before. 

Here is one from right when we moved in...

and this one from a month ago...

You can see that the stairs were narrow but what you cant see is how random the sizes were, some were wider and some were shorter. Some were wobbly and they were really squeaky. 

and now...

all the right size, no more squeak!

And you can see the bottom yellow walls got painted the same color as the hall entryway. Finally and thank goodness because it looks a thousand times better with that yellow g.o.n.e!  

Mark is going to add a handrail and wall to the left side and then we will carpet these stairs. I wasn't planning on carpeting them but Mark insists that with kids in the house and going up and down daily he wants the stairs carpeted for safety reasons which is fine with me. We wont do carpet in the basement because of the potential of water but the stairs will be so much nicer having carpet on them. We haven't settled on a carpet yet and I am still weighing the option of staining the treads and then doing a runner down the center. I dripped some paint on the steps while painting the walls so if we go that route I'll have to do some sanding. For now we are fully enjoying these new stairs, it seems SO much safer now walking down the steps! 

{ Painting Peg Board }

I really don't have a lot of time to do big projects but I did make some time this past weekend to paint the basement walls and paint + stencil some peg board to make this little craft room cute and organized. 

We have a few pieces of this peg board courtesy of my junk stuff hoarding husband so I thought it would be great to utilize it in the craft room. I can already picture all the little hooks holding up my sewing items to make things easy to grab and easy to clean up.

I painted it dark gray (the same color as the base of the floor) to begin with.

Then I took my stencil and some paint and made it pretty.

If you've stenciled anything before, you know it takes a little time. You have to let each section dry a bit before moving on to the next section. I stenciled the board in between painting the walls. I worked out perfectly and I really like the end result!

I brushed the paint on the board with a foam brush and only lightly brushed it on. I like that I can see the gray through the color and I like the imperfection of it all.

The room is really shaping up nicely. I'm still looking for a table like I showed on my mood board here so if you have one or see one, let me know.

One of my Christmas gifts was a rug and I am already loving it down here. 

We were given that beautiful dresser from Marks mom and I have yet to decide if I want to paint it or not. I struggle with painting things that already are beautiful in color but this one could go either way. 

The walls were previously sprayed with primer and I painted them white on top of the primer so it doesn't look like much but it really does look so much better in person. A lot more finished looking. 

Here's a in progress shot and you can see the difference where the paint has been rolled on. 

I also painted the wall at the bottom of the stairs

Now I have to get rid of that terrible yellow on the stairway wall and paint up those steps too. Still a lot to do down there but it's really so much better than what it was the day we looked through the house. Just picture a bug and monster spider show, dirty beyond dirty and mouse poop everywhere and you've got in your head what I experienced when walking down those steps! I never would have imagined that it could be as good as it is now because the before was scary! 

Keep checking in because one of these days I will have it all done, maybe like a year from now haha but it.will.get.done. Someday!

Hope you are having a terrific Tuesday!

{ Basement Floor - FAUX wood }

I didn't necessarily plan to paint my Saturday away but that's what ended up going down and I am THRILLED to show you the result of my hard work! 

Last week I showed you that the walls had been sprayed and my inspiration for the basement. I wasn't really sure how exactly I wanted to paint the floors but I found this on Saturday morning and I was sold. I was looking for something easy to do but a little something more than just throwing paint down so doing a faux wood floor on the concrete was a perfect solution and I think I ROCKED it out perfectly! #PROUDMOMENT

Doesn't it look awesome?! Let me tell you, it looks even more awesome in person. I know I am bragging but seriously it was an all day project that turned out SO MUCH better than I was thinking it would. Plus it was a relatively easy project - other than the fact that it took ALL day but it wasn't that difficult to do.  I LOVE how it turned out! Check out the before and after below. 

All you need is paint, a paint brush, a paint roller, and a wood graining set (I got mine at Menards for under $4- see below). 

I got a gallon of black paint and I didn't even use the whole thing. You'll need white paint too but not very much at all so use whatever you have laying around the house or only pick up a small thing of it. 

First I vacuumed the whole room really well. Then I started at one end of the room by cutting in along the wall with the black paint. Then I painted a strip of black the width of the room. I had a separate bowl that I poured black paint into and then poured white paint directly on top of it and mixed it up a little. While the strip of black paint was still wet I took the paint brush with the mixed black and white paint and brushed it quickly and haphazardly onto the black strip. Then I took the largest wood graining tool and ran it along the strip to create the wood grain look in the paint. 

Once I had a few rows done, I took the paint brush and made a faint line between the rows and then did some vertical lines so that it resembled separate pieces of wood. 

After that it was just repeating the same process row by row until the job was done. 

Some of my lines aren't perfectly straight as you can see in the photo above but it really isn't that noticeable when looking into the room. My dad came over as I was finishing up and he thought we had put down tile in the basement until I told him it was paint, he literally had no clue! 

I painted all the way over just past the steps so that when looking down the stairs it looks seamless. For sure looks like we've got tile going on down there now! I'll probably do the rest of the basement someday but it's so full of stuff right now so that will have to wait for another day year lol. 

Just painting the walls, ceiling, and floor really took the room from blah to looking a lot more finished.

I plan to put a few coats of polyurethane down to protect the floor plus it will give it that nice shiny look too. 

The basement is really moving along now. Next up I will be painting the walls - which I realize I probably should have done before painting the floor but I guess that's what drop cloths are for right?! 

After painting the walls we will be ready for furniture. Finally I will have space to do my sewing and crafting! 

Do any of you that live close to me have an old wooden ladder laying around that you want to sell? I think I've found everything I want for down here but I'm still looking for a ladder like the one below. I NEED one. Can you help me out?

So what do you guys think? Pretty cool right?! I think so!

Here's a poll question for you...what do I do with the fireplace? Paint it? Leave it as is? Not sure exactly, because I don't think the brick looks all that bad but maybe it will look better painted...??? What would you do?

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{ Basement Family Room + Mood Board }

The basement family room/craft room has FINALLY been sprayed! 

We shelled out the $ to rent one of those big sprayers and Mark got the job done last week! It was WELL worth the price to rent the sprayer. The first round that Mark started a month ago, he used one of those manual sprayers and it worked but it was very time consuming and difficult to spray up at the ceiling. So he only did one coat on the ceiling and then it sat until last week. 

He rented the sprayer and did the ceiling again and the walls. 

Next up we have to put a coat of paint on the walls. The spray was just a primer. After the paint is up then we need to paint the floors with cement paint. We aren't going to put any flooring down in here since the basement is prone to getting a little water in it. I figured we would paint the cement and get some cute area rugs. That way if there is a threat of water we can just roll up the rugs and mop up the floor. 

The photo below is a PERFECT example of how I want this room to look!

Here is my MOOD BOARD! I love putting these together because it gives me a concrete goal of the things that I want to find/get.

1./ 2./ 3./ 4./ 5. / 6.

I LOVE a table with turned legs and would love to have something like that down in the basement. This room is going to be my crafting area so I will have to have a big table to do all the things that I love to do down there. 

Above the table I want to do the hanging ladder with lights. That would probably be my favorite part of the room!

I really like the black and white rug from the inspiration photo, and IKEA has that triangle one for only $99. I need to probably get two. 

Isn't it fun to think about what you want to do with a space. The hard part is finding all the pieces to put it all together especially on a budget! I know a lot of what we will do down there will be DIY and we will probably pick up a lot of the furniture from craigslist or garage sales so if you have any of the items above that I could use that you're wanting to get rid let us know!