Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Basement shelves COMPLETED!

So, it's been awhile since I've posted any entries, but we've been awfully busy trying to get everything finished upstairs!  I think last time I posted I mentioned it was nearing completion (were we painting/doing flooring at that time?).  Anyway, flooring is DONE (yay!).  Painting is mostly done (yay!).  Trim is done (yay!).  The reason the paint is only mostly done and not completely done is because we still have some trim to paint.  That's tomorrow's job!  Kyle has sworn me off of any more painting, so he'll be doing the work alone (I don't sound too sad, do I?).  After that, we'll caulk between our trim pieces and in the bathroom, I have one more section of wood-filler to do on the floor since we put up trim, and then we'll clean the whole upstairs and we're DONE with that remodel!

Sounds simple, huh?!

So, we took a brief hiatus from remodeling over the last week due to some church obligations and some Michigan traveling (baby shower and graduation party).  Also, Kyle got a new short-term project when this week started...

BASEMENT SHELVES.  

So, before this remodel began, we had A LOT of stuff upstairs.  A lot a lot.  And obviously, it had to go somewhere...


We put two of the three extra mattresses and some exercise stuff in the office.  This actually has been pretty useful for when I can't fall back to sleep in our bed after waking up to use the bathroom a million times a night.  Also the exercise ball is a nice footrest when working on the computer and trying to keep ankle-swelling to a minimum.

The other mattress, office chair, and bookcases from upstairs are blocking the front door and have made a wonderful jungle gym for the cats this summer.

Oh, and we have stuff that CAN'T go in the basement in the dining room (stuff like Kyle's comics, etc.)

We're also utilizing the folding table in the basement...

Oh and one large corner of the basement as well!
So this stuff is NOT all going back upstairs.  It's going to be a living space, not a dumping zone!  Believe it or not, we had MORE than this, but when stuff was coming out of the upstairs, we made a point to sell/donate/trash about 1/3 of it!  Some of it WILL go back upstairs, but there's a lot that we're gradually transferring over to tote laundry baskets with lids to keep in the basement, where they'll be out of the way forever.  The problem is that the basement floods and is damp sometimes, so we don't want anything sitting directly on the floor, nor do we want to keep everything in boxes (mildew).  We also didn't want to try to screw anything into the basement walls (it's really old and just a little crumbly).  So, after combing pinterest for ideas, I found these blueprints for freestanding, cheap, wooden shelves:

http://www.diydesignfanatic.com/2012/10/diy-storage-how-to-store-your-stuff.html

I showed them to Kyle, and he said, "I can do that."  Music to my ears!  Ours are a little different from the plans because we needed a shelf for the bottom layer of totes so nothing will get wet and also our ceilings aren't as high as theirs are.  We also used recycled paneling from upstairs instead of OSB to save some money.  Glad we did!

He built one set of shelves yesterday and one today.  Here are results:

What the shelves look like all empty (cats were fascinated)

Annnnnnnnd full of stuff! 
Luckily, we also have several pallets that are holding stacks of stuff right now.  We'll keep the pallets, too, for larger items that won't fit on the shelves.  Hopefully between everything that's going back upstairs, all the stuff that will fit on shelves, and everything that goes on a pallet, we can get the rest of our house back!  

By the way...on the shelf packed full of stuff just above?  The purple tote, the four blue totes on the center shelf, and the large tote on the center shelf?  All baby clothes, organized by size.  I have a problem!

All of our DIY projects just might get done yet!  Hurray!

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