Almost finished basement!

While Mike has taken on most of our home improvement projects to date, including finishing the basement in our previous house, we hired a basement finishing company back in the late fall to install the electrical and lighting, build our walls, and spray our ceiling black during the early winter. We had a budget to put toward the basement, Mike wasn't particularly excited about those initial tasks, and we were grateful to have had more time together around the holidays as a result.

Painting the walls (Repose Gray by Valspar), installing and painting trim, and laying down our flooring (engineered bamboo in a herringbone pattern) were tasks Mike did take on, and he checked the final touch-ups off that to-do list over this weekend. Take a look!

Upgrading the staircase and building and installing a barn door for the workshop are next on his project list.

We have always been terrible about remembering to take before pictures, eager to just get improving. What you see below is representative of the state of the whole basement initially--cement walls and floor, bare light bulbs, generally depressing.

The bumped out walls in the far corner of the photo below surround the water heater and furnace in the storage room, accessible from the workshop (functional but in progress) to the left of the stairs.

I can't wait to get this space up and running! Stay tuned.