If you’ve been following our home renovation projects on instagram then you know by now that we are updating areas in our home, our basement being one of them. You can see the before here.
It all started with last winter’s thaw and a bad streak of rain which was ‘the perfect storm’ for water to find it’s way in places we had never experienced before. While our basement didn’t flood like some of our neighbor’s, we experienced enough water that forced us to tear out the carpet and investigate ways to fix the issue to make sure that we and future home owners don’t experience what we had.
We had to move everything out of our basement, tear out the carpet, and dry out the space entirely. We hired professionals to investigate our situation and provide us with a solution. Thankfully we didn’t have to install drain tile inside, which would have been a big mess and huge expense. Instead we installed it on the outside, took down walls too seal the exterior walls and then rebuilt the walls again.
Since we pretty much had a clean slate to work with, we decided it would be the best time to put in a bathroom, remove the popcorn ceiling, create a mud room space to store our things, and lay sub flooring for extra protection and warmth.
I’m happy that for the most part we are finished with the living space. We still have to finish the mud room space and bathroom, but we’re getting there. Things take time when doing things on your own. I have learned this very valuable lesson 😉
When it was time to pick out flooring we decided to go with my dream flooring, white oak planks. I love how it turned out. I was a little worried that it would make the basement feel cold. But since we installed the subfloor it makes the space feel so much warmer. Even when we had carpet, this option has worked out much better for us. We actually used the same flooring in my girl’s shared bedroom that you can visit here. I wish we could replace the rest of the floors in our home, but Aaron vetoed that plan. Which honestly is a good one. If this was indeed our forever we would probably go for it, but since it’s not, we continue to live with the 100 year old wood floors the house came with.
With the changes we were making, we decided to take the opportunity to update our furniture and style in our basement as well. I love rugs so having the wood floor to play with has been fun!
I had about five different mood boards going when designing this space. I seem to have heart eyes for a lot of different styles and can easily get overwhelmed with the commitment part, anyone else?! I eventually settled though and love how warm and cozy the space feels.
I went with a darker colored sofa this time around and LOVE IT! I was a little nervous about going with dark because I know my love for neutrals runs deep, but since this is a room we spend a lot of time in, dark seemed like a good fit. And it works! If I learned anything about this process, is that venturing out of your comfort zone can be so rewarding. Our sofa is the Amelia sofa from Six Penny. We decided to go with the washed linen, in black pepper.
Our rug is from Loloi Rugs. It’s soft and cozy and I personally think it goes really well with our Amelia Sofa.
We still have to make our ottoman, which is another blog post coming soon, but other than that, this little corner of the basement is complete!
Ashley says
Beautiful space! Do you think the washed linen fabric will hold up and where are your pillows from?
kari says
Thank you! I do. We have it on another sofa in our home that we’ve had for a few years now. So far so good. Of course it always depends on you and your family needs. The pillows are from and Etsy shop called Design Family.