Why Didn't We Do This Sooner????

I'm going to admit I thought I would NEVER say the phrase "I love my basement".  Our basement was that super creepy basement that no one ever likes to go in, it was dark and dingy. Not to mention cold!!!  Here is a sneak peak at what it looked like when we moved in.  The black thing on the wall was actually a window!! There are 2 windows down there that they had covered up because some idiot drilled speaker wire through the window frame to get sound outside... Needless to say we still need to get new windows BUT we at least uncovered them to let in some light!

We ripped up the astro turf carpet (no joke) when we first moved in and just lay down some area rugs on the concrete floors.

After painting the wood panelling a nice 'eggnog' (by Behr) I painted the zee brick the same colour as I mentioned in this post. I still have one wall yet to finish but I'll hopefully get to that this week. That really helped to lighten up the basement.

Then we got some carpet from my parents place when they replaced their carpet. We didn't install it we just lay it down on the floor as a temporary solution.  Then 2 weeks ago we decided it was time to actually install it! We got everything we needed and started to lay it down only to find a few problems.  First off the 2 pieces of carpet had been weathered from the sun shining through the windows at my parents place and we quickly found they were 2 different colours... one a pinkish brown the other a grayish brown. That I could have lived with.  The second problem was that Ryan and I had serious measuring issues that day and when we cut the carpet we somehow (still have no idea how because we measured 3 times) short cut the piece by 5 inches which meant we had this tiny little strip of carpet down the one wall.  And thirdly... we are NOT carpet installation experts... we did a horrible job (mostly because we didn't have the proper tools).  SO after getting half the carpet installed we stopped and thought about it for a week.  We had planned on returning the laminate we bought for upstairs as we decided not to install it in the kitchen. I measured out the basement and was happy to find we had MORE than enough flooring to install it in the basement.  On Saturday Ryan's mom came and watched Norah as we installed the flooring. It was surprisingly SUPER easy and a lot of fun!!!  Ryan got to use my dads table saw and cut all the pieces while I measured (5 times sometimes just to make sure) the pieces.  AND here is what it looks like now!!!!

You can see where the window is... new windows should be coming before winter which will help brighten it up too!!!!

I need to add some lighting to the back area but this is the sitting area.  There will be a tv above the electric fireplace soon enough.

Look at those nice new baseboards!!!!!

And this section at the bottom of the stairs will be Norah's new play area!

It isn't finished yet. I still have to finish painting the zee brick behind the wood burning stove.  The baseboards need to be caulked, sanded and painted.  I somehow missed a small section of zee brick in the entrance to the laundry room (you can see if above).  I also want to paint the gate in the picture above the same colour as the walls.  Ryan and I LOVE IT!!!! I just can't wait for new windows so it makes the place brighter... and warmer!!!