And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

Sep 22

The basement renovation has officially commenced with the ceremonial first swing of the sledge hammer.

And that sledge hammer made the well thought out plans change. Of course.

The original basement plan? New paint, new flooring, new furniture. Easy peasy.

After living with cement floors and thinking about it for months? No more work out room and opening up the walls completely. Or should I say…

Why? First of all we could not call that room a bedroom as the window was not large enough. And putting in a larger window was going to require digging out all around the foundation and cutting through cement. Which equals dollar signs. New plan.

The basement needs to serve many functions for us- man space, workout space, play space, tv space, and guest space. This would be a lot easier with the walls gone and the workout space not hogging an entire closed off room. Not to mention that it would be nice to actually be able to see the play space while you are working out to make sure no trouble is happening. Although it is sort of attractive to have that excuse about why my work outs were not happening.

This plan had much discussion before the sledge hammer flew.

What if we made that room the play space? Where will the elliptical go? What about a combo workout/play space? How long are we staying this house as the most cost effective option is new paint and cheap carpet?

In the end we decided the walls were coming down.

So the old furniture got loaded up for it’s new home at my brother’s first place.

And down came the drywall.

And then the plan changed again….because there were not one load bearing pole as we expected, but two. And of course they were awkwardly right next to each other. Like three feet in between them.

Awesome.

We discussed sliding them towards the staircase, but after figuring out what making a footing for them entailed, that idea was discarded.

New idea…fireplace in between them. We loved the look of gas, but that would require hiring someone to run a gas line and to vent it which equaled dollar signs again. So we decided to go with electric as it was much more DIY and wallet friendly. And after spending a lot of time visiting fireplace stores and researching online and watching YouTube videos (yes people really do post videos of different types of fireplace models which turned out to be strangely helpful) we ordered this baby.

Then we just had to figure out where everything was going around it. The challenges? A lot of functions in a relatively small space. Wanting to hide the workout equipment, but have it easily accessible so it might get used more often. And those ^&%$ low soffits that elliptical machines, murphy beds and any activity involving your hand over your head like workout videos can not be under.

Just a little bitter of how they got in the way of every good idea I had.

They and those ^&$# poles.

But I think we have it figured out. I was going to post it, but no one would care to look as the diagram besides me and frankly it will probably change again.

One thing I am excited about …how we are going to hide the workout equipment-