Basement Renovation: Final Reveal
Our basement renovation has been the longest renovation project in our house. We started by underpinning back in 2017 and it’s been a constant effort of renovating each part of…
Office Upgrade
As we were starting our basement renovation, COVID hit and we had to create make-shift home office spaces so we could work from home. In March 2020, we were in…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Final Touches
Once the tile work was completely done, it was time to do all the finicky finishing touches. Painting Every wall in our house is Chantilly Lace white and I’ve rarely…
Basement Family Room: TV Wall
With the drywall up and the walls painted, we knew that we had to do something interesting for our TV wall because it was just one giant white wall. I…
Basement Family Room: Media Unit
After scouring the internet for a few weeks, I decided that nothing online met my criteria for our basement family room media cabinet. I wanted white oak to match the…
Basement Renovation: New Windows
We have 4 basement windows and 3 of them were completely boarded up. Now that we’re renovating the basement, we wanted to have some natural light and get new windows.…
Basement Family Room Renovation: Framing, Drywalling and Painting – Part 2
Last winter we finished the first half of the basement family room because I was returning to work after my maternity leave and I needed a relatively clean space to…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Tiling
Months into my basement bathroom reno, I was finally ready to tile. The walls were up, plumbing and electrical were in, and waterproofing was done. Materials and Tools My original…
Basement Family Room Renovation: Built-In Sektion Cabinets
We absolutely love the built-in storage under our basement stairs. But we filled it quickly and knew we needed more! As part of our family room design, we decided to…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Waterproofing
I’ve done a lot of renovating over the last 6 years, and there are two things that scare me: structural work and anything that can cause water damage. So I…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Backerboard and Drywall
After months and months of delay, I was finally at a place where I was ready to install walls in the bathroom. I cannot even explain how excited I was…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Framing
With 5 people in the house now, our one 5’x7′ bathroom just isn’t going to cut it. We always planned on adding a bathroom in the basement, so when we…
Basement Family Room Renovation: Framing, Drywalling and Painting
Because our basement bathroom renovation project was so delayed, we decided to shift gears and make progress on the family room – basically a second living room in the basement…
Basement Renovation: Built-In Storage
Like most basements, we’ve used ours for storing things we don’t use everyday. It’s also become the “I don’t have the energy to deal with this, so throw it in…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Shower Base Installation
When we underpinned our basement, we knew that we would build a bathroom and we had all the rough-in plumbing done then. But when we started figuring out our bathroom…
Basement Bathroom Renovation: Design
The layout of our bathroom was determined when we underpinned our basement and all the rough-in plumbing was done. But the specifics of the design still needed to be figured…
Basement Bedroom Renovation: Framing, Drywall and Painting
Once the back of the basement was clear of our crap, it was time to start framing the back half of the basement. The hardest part of the basic framing…
Basement Renovation: Tidying and Organizing
The birth of our twins made our house feel very small. All of a sudden, almost twice the number of people were living in our house. Plus, with all of…
Basement Renovation: Part 5 – Cost
How much a project is going to cost is always the biggest question mark in any house renovation (or any project, really). It is so difficult to get a definitive…
Basement Renovation: Part 4 – Construction
Our basement construction involved two major construction pieces: the underpinning and the hydronics work. Since it only required us coordinating with two trades, we decided to coordinate the work ourselves…
Basement Renovation: Part 3 – Furnace v. Boiler
The only major scope creek that we had during our basement renovation was our decision to change from forced air (a furnace) to radiant heat (via a boiler). We made…
Basement Renovation: Part 2 – Design
We are renovating our basement in two phases. Phase 1 is simply underpinning the basement, replacing all the drains, and building new stairs. The second phase will be finishing the…
Basement Renovation: Part 1 – Hiring Professionals
After investigating a kitchen renovation, we decided to renovate our basement first. The most compelling case for the switch in scope was made by our real estate agent who reassured…