The Basement is Finished!

I haven't posted for a few days, because we've been super-busy getting ready for school next week and Sunday School in about a month. We've got all our school supplies sitting on my dresser, waiting to be labeled, and bits of SS material all over the place! Just getting to be that time of year again. So, sorry I haven't posted much to tell you about our daily happenings. It's just that our daily happenings have been church or school-related and, quite frankly, not interesting enough to post about. Unless you enjoy hearing about how I contact papered a bunch of stuff. Oh, and I COULD tell you that Livie finally got the fifths too, so it has now officially spread to all our kids. Fun! Anyway, thought I'd let you know about our basement!! Got it finished over the weekend and am just now getting to post about it. Now, granted, by most people's standards, it's NOT finished, in that it doesn't have drywall or a ceiling, but to me, it's finished. It's organized, carpeted, and 2 new living spaces were created. :-) Yay!



This is our original playroom (sorry all the pictures are fuzzy - batteries were running low and our camera sucks). We made this space for the kids a couple years ago. Please excuse the mess. The kids were having a lot of fun and, let's face it, playrooms are meant to be a disaster, right? ;-) This space hasn't changed much.

This is the "After" shot. Tried to upload it to be below the "Before" shot, but I've given up, so here it is. We carpeted the area from the steps all the way down to the end of the room almost. Adding a recliner and making that area a family room section.

This was the "Before" shot. We had the couches down there, the tv/ent center, but there was no carpet and tons of toys that had no place to go! Not to mention the dress-up clothes rack on the right side there, blocking most of the walkway into that space. This picture was taken half-way through the clean-up. It was twice as bad as this, if you can imagine!

This is the living area now. Carpeted, free of toys and now we can watch tv or play games while we're downstairs and the kids don't have to sit on concrete. :-) It's great!

This is the "Before" shot of the area behind the couch area. There's a space back in the back there that has our ping-pong table, but it was basically just concrete and the kids would ride their bikes on it. And, no, it's not Christmas. Just our tree with no place to go.

Now, looking from the ping-pong table to the opposite wall, we've created a whole other play area - mostly for the girls. They have all their Am. Girl things there, dress-up clothes rack, barbies, Groovy Girls, etc... And, we left just enough room around this play area for them to still ride their bikes around. It's like a little road going from the ping-pong table, around that, to the opposite side by the bins. And, yes, this was taken at about 1pm and they are still in their pjs. I've been busy getting church stuff done all morning and they were content to stay in their pjs, so that's what we're doing. ;-)

This is the wall of bins of stuff we sorted and collected and put away. I believe there are over 40 bins of stuff. I got rid of probably 20 bins. So, this is our "finished" basement. The kids love it! We love it! And, after Em and Jeff come and take the rest of our baby stuff, we will be completely clutter free! Hooray!!! :-)