Our biggest task this year (besides pushing a baby out and taking care of a newborn) is to finally tackle the basement. When we moved in last year the lower level was sort of left alone as it was – hideous wallpaper and everything. Lincoln uses it for his home office and I spend only dark evenings down there anyway, so it didn’t really bother me too much what it looked like. What can I say – I am done ignoring that wallpapery mess down there. And we have to make some room shifting happening this year to fit in another child.

So here is the plan. The baby will move into the current guest bedroom, the guest bedroom will move into the playroom in the basement. We don’t have guests all year round anyway and for those few weeks the basement should not be too uncomfortable. The room is actually bigger and more isolated from noisy kids, the only downside is that it doesn’t have a window. But since it is mainly for sleeping anyway, I think everyone will be okay. This is what the playroom was styled like when we moved in and all we had to do was adding a few toys.

Looks totally appropriate for playing, but not really like a calming retreat for people that need to recover from touring DC all day. So, the blue, the wallpaper, and at least half of the toys will have to go.

In the main part of the basement things aren’t as colorful, but it looks even crazier. There is stuff everywhere, an oversized couch occupying half of the room, and Lincoln’s work stuff spreads out wherever there is still space. Currently he has a photo studio set up on one side of the room, his extended desk area on the other side, and garments anywhere in between.

 

The master plan for the big room is huge. And will take some time. And might have to wait until after baby a.k.a next year. Check out here the before and planned after of furniture arrangements:

The main goal is to separate work area from living area and confine work stuff to the area that it belongs in. Of course that also requires a comprehensive desk and storage solution that Lincoln has been planning passionately and might share in another post.

These floor plans were made with the free online software homestyler and they even let you shoot a cool 3D panorama view of the designed space. Of course all with limited design options, but this is an approximate idea of what the space will look like. The shelf will be built in as a closet with sliding mirror doors. The desk and work area will be on one side of the room and the lounging area on the other side. Milo will get a small play corner for his train table and other supplies as well.

Phase 1 of the project will be to neutralize the play room due to the urgency of impending baby invasion. We already started stripping down the wall paper and priming the walls. More on that soon.

Phase 2 will be to fix the lighting situation. Currently all lights in the basement are hooked up to one switch, so if you want light in the big room, you are necessarily gonna wake up the guests in the other room or vice versa. We have to separate them into two circuits and will also upgrade them to recessed lights with brighter shine power. The current boob lights are just too dim and won’t fit any bigger light bulbs.

Phase 3 would be to tackle the walls and closet building-in in the big room. But as I said, let’s stay realistic here and see when we actually get to it.

Oh yeah, in the above floor plan I also made the laundry room a little bigger, but that is not really gonna happen. Unless we decide to build a small bathroom in the basement at some point, then we would need the additional storage area.

Okay, enough of unrealistic dreams for now and back to finishing the new guest room.