And we’re done. HELLO? Did you see that? We’re finally done with our basement renovation! And it only took a year! To see our progress from beginning to end, click here. Of course the last step of the process, laying down the carpet, did not come without a few bumps. We looked high and low at carpet styles, carpet colors, carpet pads, etc. We got prices from multiple stores and it took weeks until we finally landed on one, we had a 20% off coupon which helped too. The carpet we landed on was a light creamy plush carpet where the strands stick straight up. We were sent a samples of the carpet but were sent a different style, it was twisty, also known as frieze. We immediately called our sales guy and said, thanks for the sample but that’s not the carpet style we ordered, we ordered the plush one. He said he’d make sure the computer had the correct one and all was well. We decided to go with it and a few weeks later the carpet installers arrived at our house. The two guys went downstairs and did their thing. Once done, they called up for my husband to come down and look… and the first thing out of my husband’s mouth… “You installed the frieze carpet?” Profanity was strewn from the installer’s mouth. They messed up, they were supposed to verify with my husband before laying the carpet but they did not. But apparently the sales guy didn’t update the computer either… Mind you, I was on a business trip and my husband wrote to me and said “We have a problem. They installed the wrong carpet.” My mind was racing, my heart was beating fast, my husband sent a few pics and I wasn’t so sure about it. Pretty much we had two options: keep the carpet and get a discount or reinstall the whole thing and have to spend another day at home. My husband wanted to wait until I got home to make a decision, and the moment I stepped into the basement, I LOVED THE CARPET! I immediately dug my toes into the threads and laid down on the ground, big sigh of relief! Needless to say, we got a good chunk of money back so that sure was a bonus!

So without further ado, I present to you, our FINALLY finished basement!

As you walk down the stairwell, you’ll first notice the bamboo wallpaper.

And as you turn to the right, we have the wide open space with a beam in the middle and a cozy fireplace.

Say hello to frieze carpet, I just can’t get enough of digging my toes into it!

I just love the big open space without any furniture, maybe we’ll leave it like that for a bit longer. Marvin and I are such pack rats that I know once we start putting stuff back in the basement, it’s going to look cluttered. Although that means we can’t park one of our cars in the garage since it’s currently holding all the furniture… well parking outside is totally fine for summer/fall but I suppose we’ll have want to have that garage space back before it snows yea?

So I’ve been a little negligent in writing posts for my Nest Designs category, shame on me.  My current CSN Store Giveaway that I have running basically reminded me that I needed to update you all on my basement!  Well, wouldn’t you know we’ve definitely made some progress on the basement in the past few months.  In case you missed it before, check out Series 1 and Series 2 to see how far we’ve come!  Basically, we’ve fixed the foundation so no agua seeps in, put up drywall, taped, mudded, sanded, primed, painted and changed some fixtures in the past… 10 months.  Yea, we’re kind of slow but we don’t have a deadline so we just do what we can without being overwhelmed!  And here’s what we’ve done in the past two months (with a lot of invaluable help from my Dad).

May 2010 – June 2010

Basement Bathroom

- Repainted the bathroom vanity and mirror from wood to a clean white (Thanks Dad!)

- Put in Traffic Master Allure vinyl plank tiles (joint effort by Marvin and Dad)

- Painted the bathroom walls Gray Ash (Behr paint) and installed the new light fixture

and here we have one side of the bathroom finished  (this last picture taken without flash, it’s hard to take a picture of the whole bathroom because the area is pretty small)

Main Basement Area

- We’re currently in the process of putting up the white baseboard trim (Marvin’s doing this one)    Once done, we’ll have to repaint it to cover up the nails

- And we’ve gotten multiple bids for carpet but just have to decide which one to go with.  This is the one thing we’re going to hire someone else to install!  Picking out a color has been quite the feat, we want a neutral color carpet but don’t want it to be too close to the wall color since that’s pretty neutral as well!  I think we’re going to go with a lighter, creamy, ivory type color.

And that’s it, after the carpet is put in we’ll be DONE in terms of renovations and on to decorating we’ll go!  We’ve really come a long way since wood paneling and stained yellow ceilings!