Finished Basement Theater Room Reveal

This room has been a work in progress for about 1.5 years.  When we bought our house, the basement was unfinished and we just threw all our crap down there.

In July of 2011, when I was 8 months pregnant, we had a bad storm and our basement flooded.  We had about a foot of water and we lost a lot of old memories and things we saved.  After the flood, we learned our lesson about storing things in cardboard boxes and we invested in some heavy duty shelves and totes.

The shelves were the beginning of our new finished basement design and we slowly started working on it.  I am very proud to say that my husband completed this whole job by himself over about 18 months.  It was a LOT of hard work and I tried to help as much as I could (or help by babysitting Connor) while he was working. 

Here are the stairs before we started.

The basic plan was to have the heavy duty shelves on the side and then create an L-shaped storage area that circled around to the back of the room.  The storage area would hold the random crap, the storage totes, furnace, electrical box, and other various things that could be hidden.  The rest of the room was converted into a theater room/man cave/play area for us to enjoy.  The technology and the electronic aspects were designed by the husband and then I chose most of the decorations, colors, furniture, etc.

So after 18 months of hard work, I present to you the new finished basement!

I asked for some small cubbies in the stairway for extra storage and I love how they turned out.

Walk down the stairs and this is what you see...

I'm not usually a fan of leather furniture, but I felt it was the best choice with a toddler and a husband who likes to snack.  The patterned pillows I made make it a little softer and more warm.

The husband requested that we hang some manly theater-type art, so I searched for awhile until I found these theater art pieces from Hobby Lobby.

The screen was my husband's special project.  We have a projector hanging from the ceiling that projects onto the 95 inch screen.  The screen is painted on the wall using a special paint called Silver Screen which is supposed to be the perfect hue for a screen on the wall.  The cabinet was another difficult purchase as we had to find something that fit perfectly in the space and would hold all the equipment.  By making a few alterations to the cabinet once we got it home, we were able to make it work in the room.

The door to the left of the screen is for a little room that holds the sump pump and back-up emergency sump pump.  Hopefully, we will never have to deal with a flood again!

This area isn't as pretty, but it's the computer/gaming area for the husband.  I added my touch with a few baby photos to remind him who's upstairs while he plays!

Here's a better view of the projector on the ceiling and the surround speakers on the walls.

It's pretty amazing to see how this room was transformed in a short time and was all done by us!  From this mess...


...to this amazing room!

Amazing Fireplace Transformation

This was our fireplace when we moved in to the 70's-tastic house. Even when we first walked in to view the house before buying, we knew it had to go QUICKLY. But this was not the best task to start with when we moved into the house. This fireplace was a HUGE undertaking and a lot more work than we originally thought. Basically, we wanted to cover up the ugly brick and build a mantle that would match our style. Sounds pretty straightforward, but it definitely wasn't!

If you want to see all of the horrible, but hilarious problems we went through, see this post.

We started out by building a mantle. The challenge was that we had that concrete slab in the middle of the wall that needed to be covered. The mantle had to be built around it so it would hide inside.

Instead of tearing out the brick, we covered the brick in drywall and then added durock in the area we wanted tile. By this time it was the middle of the winter and let's just say it was pretty cold working in a room with no cover on the fireplace! We had to start building fires when we needed things to dry or it would take forever! We tiled the hearth and area around the fireplace opening with a simple tan-colored tile to match the wall paint.

The next big challenge was how to add the tv, dvd player, cable box and all the wires without having stuff everywhere. I'll give Hubby all the credit on this as he was able to come up with a sneaky solution to this problem.

The solution: the room next to the family room is the laundry room and there was a little area of a closet that had no purpose. So we wired all of our component through the wall to these little shelves that Hubby built. Eventually, we'll redo the laundry room and make them pretty, but for now, this works great.

Here is our finished tv and mantle! As you can see, we also added crown moulding around the entire room and above the tv to give it a more finished look.


We have a remote that works through the wall so we can change channels with the cable box being in another room.


I love our tile choice. It looks great with the color of the wall and it's not too distracting from the mantle and tv.





Also, notice my initial fame on the right side that I made earlier in the year.
Go here for my tutorial.

Running with a new toy!

When I bought these shoes in the spring, I just wanted a pair of shoes that was comfortable and in a somewhat cute color. Gotta look cute even when you work out, right?

Now that I've been getting more into running, I've been getting more curious about my time, speed and distance. I try to track it with a watch, but it doesn't work very well and I always question if it's accurate. It took a lot of convincing, but Hubby finally made me go out and buy a Nike+! I hardly ever spend that much money on myself, but he knew it was something I really wanted and it would help me enjoy running even more.

I had to get the white and pink one to match my favorite running tank!

So far, I'm loving the Nike+ and it's been really great to get an accurate read on my miles and distance. I can upload my stats to the Nike website and keep track of my distance and workouts so I can look back and see my progress. I still can't believe how far I've come since the winter!

Bye-bye flip phone...hello DROID!

Just trying to figure out how this darn thing works!

Does anyone have any apps they would recommend?