What better way to spend time in your house… in a pandemic.

March came and with it a pandemic. We are fortunate that we have a wonderful house and a roof over our head. For most people at the moment spending time in your house is becoming a little much and the need for space, a reality. We have slowly been working on the basement and after a summer of spending time in the garden, the winter has now hit and we are so close to finishing the basement, our pandemic project.

We started this giant project early on this year. With the aim to have it complete by Christmas. If you have been following along with our home reno you will know that it was pretty much a shell. We’ve replaced windows, completed insulation, put in walls, doors and bar tops. This is the work in progress and I am sure in the new year I will get to the big reveal.

Huge thanks

We couldn’t have completed the work so far without the hero’s at Home Depot who have been working through this pandemic the whole time. Thank you for being open! We have also had socially distant wall sanding parties, with air flow and mask wearing! (We know how to party!) So to our friends and family that have helped we are so lucky to have you! The mudding was probably my least favourite part, I came out of the basement covered in dust on multiple occasions. The essentials for the process:

See the First post on our Basement Reno here.

Pandemic project continues – how it looks now..

We have walls and a floor and has come along way since the beginning of the year. The process of creating walls is a long and dusty one. Screwing drywall, mudding and then sanding back to create a flat even wall. On top of all that you have to paint it. We absolutely busted a gut to at least have the floor down by Christmas Day. We for went the trim and cosmetics because we can finish those things as we use the space. The next project will be the dry bar.

Painting

The next step was painting, we went for a simple white everywhere and then along the line when we are bored will possibly bring in some color. For now I like how bright it is. The process started with primer. I trawled the internet for what to get, I decided against a paint and primer in one, As we were going white, we didn’t tint anything either. I also read that wasn’t a good idea and paint and primers are really only best for walls that have been painted previously. We used an entire 5 gallon on priming, the drywall soaks it up so well, and don’t worry if it looks awful I was worried you’d be able to still see drywall even with the proper paint but it was fine.

The primer was sandable so if we noticed any imperfections we could sort those out before we moved to actual paint. We went with a white matte finish for the actual paint, and the 5 gallon tub was just enough to complete 2 coats. The primer made the more expensive paint go further and that’s the importance of priming.

Flooring

The flooring is a rigid core vinyl. We did the most research on this as it was something that we hadn’t completed before. Having never bought flooring, let alone flooring for a basement, we needed something waterproof. We also needed to consider something that wasn’t going to be cold or need a subfloor. Starting our search with waterproof laminate. I wanted a wood look to the floor but I also wanted wide planks and something that looked as close as we could to oak.

I read numerous blog posts on flooring to get a better idea of what I wanted, when I came across this post by Delia Creates. Her house is amazing so if you haven’t seen her blog before go check it out! The Lifeproof flooring sounded amazing, quick to lay, good quality, large planks, and waterproof. We went with the Lifeproof Rigid Core fresh oak flooring. I love it!

As work continues I’ll bring you more blogs on our design projects!