Our Basement Makeover
The Forgotten Space in Our Home…
I’m so excited to finally show off our basement makeover. This room makeover has been a long time coming. Our basement has been in need of a transformation since we moved in. As we are now looking to stay in our rental home for a little bit longer, I wanted to make that we are maximising the space that we have. When it comes to rentals, storage is always lacking. So if I’ve got a whole room that I can dedicate to just storage, I’m jumping at the chance.
Our basement is almost the same size as our living room, so a lot of space. Previously, it was just a dumping ground, one of two in our home (more on the second one later on in the year). Because this space had been clearly neglected before we moved in, there was stuff leftover from the previous tenant. Due to the size of the clean up, I had been avoiding this project for a while. However, over the last couple of weeks I took the plunge. Below is the before of our basement makeover…
The Basement Makeover Before.
As you can see, it was not pretty. Lots of debrit, clutter, peeling paint. You can see why I’ve been putting it off for ages. It needed a complete makeover and a long overdue throw-out. So that’s exactly what we did. After taking a couple of weeks to Marie Kondo the stuff down here and many trips to the recycling centre, all that was left was to scoop up the debrit and strip the walls.
Ideally, I would have loved to finish the walls completely and have it a more ‘liveable’ space. However, it’s not our home and I wasn’t ready to spend that much money on the space. So, to get the best of both worlds, we stripped back the paint and went over the bricks with a breathable maisonary paint. Because there is a slight mold problem in the room, I wanted to make sure we could get rid as much as we could and get the room breathing again.
Once all this was done, it was time for the fun part.
The Basement Makeover After.
As you can see, such a difference. Even looking back on my Instagram highlights and looking at these before and afters, I can’t quite believe how far we’ve come. This room is so much more inviting and welcoming. Plus, the storage! I had one of these IVAR systems from Ikea already down here, but adding and extending this opened up so many opportunities for storing more down here. Everything is organised into their own spots (something that I will touch on in a later in another post). You can finally move around the space, and there’s room to store more down here as and when.
Something that made a difference was covering up our meters. You obviously needed access to these, but they don’t have to be on show all the time. So the plan was to box them out, a little DIY project I did by myself. To give them a little something and bring some colour down into the space, I painted them French Grey by Farrow & Ball. It’s that perfect calming colour that compliments the rest of the home and breaks up the brown and white of the room.
I’m so proud of this makeover. It’s brought such calm to our home and has spurred me on to tackle the rest of the home.