Project: Finishing the Basement - Part 1

Hello friends! I mentioned in our New Home posts that we would be finishing our basement, turning our 3-bedroom home into a 6-bedroom home, within the first year.  Well, that work has begun! We are very excited about this.  We currently have all 5 kids in 2 bedrooms, which is less than ideal.  We are, of course, making it work thanks to my mad organization skills, but it will be so nice to get all of the kids in their own rooms eventually.  The girls especially are anxious to not be crammed 3-to-a-room.

For our budget's sake, we are only finishing the 3 bedrooms, bathroom, and a couple of closets in the family room right now.  Once we get those done and the girls moved in, we will save up some more and finish the family room.

We had hoped to do most of the work ourselves to save some money, but Kevin's work schedule and his side business have been keeping him so busy that if we wanted to get it done, (which we NEEDED to do ASAP!) then we had to hire out a lot of it.

We were able to do some of the framing ourselves, but we ended up hiring out most of it.  We also hired out the HVAC (which we couldn't do ourselves) and the plumbing.

We have been able to do the electrical ourselves, and it is nearly done.  I had never pulled electrical before, but it was very easy.  We have a couple of electricians in the family, so we will have one of them actually hook it all up to the electrical panel.  We also had another Central Vacuum outlet put in downstairs.  It hooks in to our current system (which I love!!!!) and will just have to be hooked into the electrical as well.  Sheetrock will hopefully start next week if we can finish up a few more framing and electrical things.

Each of the girls bedrooms have been wired with can lights and a central main light.  I got some really great deals on Overstock for the main lights for each of the girls rooms.  I can't wait to show you once they get hung!

One of the changes we made from the original builder plans for the basement was the bathroom.  With 3 girls using the bathroom, I know space is going to be a premium, even with it being so large.  I'm not a huge fan of the long skinny bathrooms (like we had in our last house) when all of the girls are trying to get ready in the front of the mirror or I am trying to help them with their hair.  So, in the front part of the bathroom, with the vanity and mirror, I bumped out the wall and extra two-feet to give plenty of room for doing hair and getting around anyone standing in front of the vanity.  This is going to be wonderful!

For our vanity, we priced out many options, and Ikea could not be beat!  We are going to be doing a 24" linen cabinet, with drawers on the bottom, a 24" sink base, and 2 more 18" drawer bases.  So each girl will have a set of drawers for their stuff, plus some added linen closet space to hold extra towels and toiletries.  I'm still working on counter tops.  We also still need to pick the tile for the floor and shower.  We plan to do that during the sheetrocking phase.

Two of the girls rooms are going to have a closet (with a built-in organizer) for their clothes and an additional closet with just shelving (for toys/crafts/etc.) I'm really excited about the extra storage this is going to provide them! Yay for storage!

In this room we are going to be doing a window seat and built-in bookcases on either side of the window for my avid-reading daughter.  We put in additional small can lights above the seat with a switch nearby as well as near the entrance of the room.  With the additional storage she will have with the built-ins, we didn't do a storage closet in her room.

And this is the very DISORGANIZED rest of the space.  Most of the stuff in here will be going into the girls rooms.  There will also be room for a lot of it in the family room closets we are finishing.  Can I tell you how much this STRESSES ME OUT???? The mess is killing me.  But I am so excited for the finished product.  I can't wait! In the mean time, I am plotting all the organizing I am going to be doing when we are finished.  Now that will be FUN!