Basement Project Stage 1

When we first bought our house we loved the idea of having a partially finished basement, especially since we couldn't really of made one work with our old house. The thought of being able to eventually host parties and have another place to relax was awesome, the only thing stopping us was this:

Hot mess, I know. I was reminded of it several times a week when I would have to go downstairs to do the laundry and have to walk pass it.

I woke up determined to get that room cleared out, I meant I was determined to get the hubs to help me take care of it..  So after a few hours, we managed to move, organization and throw away a ton of stuff, which then left the room looking much better:

Then we got busy painting the walls from the salmon-ey color to Dutch Boy 'Water Fowl' (C15-3):

And you're probably wondering why we painted the walls before installing the ceiling.  Well we do things when we have time for them and frankly installing a ceiling didn't fit into our time frame at the moment, plus we were not sure exactly what type of ceiling we wanted.

All the holes in the trim were filled, sanded and a nice coat of glossy white paint sealed the deal.

From there we had plans to work on the vinyl flooring.  It is beat up and desperately needs to be replaced.  We wouldn't normally go with peel and stick tile, but for this area we didn't want to fork out a ton of money right now and wanted a temporary fix.  So off to our second home Menards we went because I really wanted this vinyl flooring:

But it can only be ordered in sheets and cannot be custom cut.  With that said we would have ended up wasting money, plus we realized the color wouldn't have matched. 

Round two. Back at Menards looking for something reasonable and we stumbled upon pre cut rolls of vinyl flooring for $20 each and we found two that matched thinking it would be perfect.  We brought them home and that was epic fail #2, the flooring was WAY too dark.  I took a picture, but accidently deleted it.  Trust me, way too dark.

After that fail, we went back, returned the rolls and found this tile:

We were kind of hoping to crank out this project, get the quarter round down and check off another thing on our list, but the thing about peel and stick tile is the only way it can work is if it sticks.  The hubs laid down one tile and it popped right back up. (Yes we took off the backing on it too, so it wasn't operator error).

So back to the store we went...again.  Crappy peel and stick tile returned and we raised the white flag.  We decided that the gods were working against us and took it as a sign to take a break and not worry about the floors.

We were able to make some progress besides the fact that we totally failed the floor and managed to get some can lights installed.

What's next?  Drywall.  Even a healthy Emily is not strong enough to help with the drywall, so we will have to enlist the help of a friend or two to assist the hubs in finishing that part.