Open For Business

We've spent the last few weeks working on our finished basement room and we're nearly done with it. Here's what it looked like when the former owners lived here:

You can't really tell from this photo, but that is some dirty carpet. You can tell from this photo that it is clad in some swanky brown panelling from the 1970's and has attractive steam heat pipes running across the already low ceiling. We decided to set it up as a guest bedroom since the girls already have a playroom off the living room. We ripped out the carpet and Mike (and me and Dale, but mostly Mike) spent WEEKS painting and painting and painting (the ceiling, the pipes, the walls). Then last Thursday, the new carpet was laid and....voila!

Notice the umpteen electrical outlets... and how all of them are black! What the heck were they doing down there that they needed an outlet every 1.5 feet? Combine that info with the fact that there are only two outlets in the kitchen and the unanswered questions just multiply.

The built in shelves are nice. I hope to paint the insides light green at some point in the future.

Kate kept pointing to the walls and saying, "White, white," over and over again. The color is actually Eggnog by Behr, which is a very light creamy yellow.

Somersaults on the great expanse of carpet. They were loving it! Here's a video of them going crazy after the carpet installers left:

Yesterday we started putting furniture back into the room. That old phone table was down there when we moved in and Mike likes it for some reason! That little blue thing is Kate's potty. We've been at it seriously this past week and it's been a mix of success and mopping. We persevere. So far she hasn't pee pee'd on the carpet, though, thank goodness!

This bed used to be ours, but the movers couldn't get the box spring up our stairs when we first moved in here! We had to buy a new queen bed with a divided box spring and put this one in the basement. The bedspread was a wedding gift! We haven't used it in a while, but I hoped it would make this subterranean room look a bit more cheerful and warm. It's actually green, and I thought it would contrast more with the walls, but the odd basement light through the small windows makes them look similar. I'll need to add more green accents to the room, maybe bedside table lamp shades and whatever ends up going on the walls.

The girls couldn't wait to test out the bed. They gave it two thumbs up. But don't take their word for it, come and visit us and see for yourself!