A basement kitchenette

Hey everybody! It’s time for the kids to go back to school around here, after a THREE week break. I’ll miss the kiddo but getting back to the schedule will be good for us. I guess. Boo.
So I got a ton done again this weekend, but like the other projects I’m working on lately this one going to be a multiple step thing. This was step two of who knows how many but I’m excited about the progress! I like to share the process with you all instead of before with nothing and an after with it all done, cause obviously that’s not how it happens.
When we finished the basement last year we knew we wanted a kitchenette down there somewhere. It’s not a HUGE space though so we needed to make it work in a spot that wouldn’t take up a lot of room. We decided on a small wall in the family room, just outside the laundry room:

I shared that pic late last year after the cabinets were installed. What you don’t see is there is a rough in for a sink – the part I’m most excited about. :) But today we’re talking counters and paint.
I’ve gone back and forth on the counters for months now. My original plan was butcher block with an undermount sink, but then a few weeks ago I found a laminate counter I loved at Lowe’s. They didn’t have the one I loved in stock though, so I went back to my butcher block idea.
But getting the block means a long trip to IKEA (which I’m planning on doing today, but whatever, it was last minute) and I already need to get some butcher for the mud room bench, so getting two was going to get expensive. And then last week I was back and Lowe’s and the counter I loved was in stock and I noticed it was only $34! Thirty bucks people, seriously…I couldn’t believe it!
Laminate means no undermount sink but I’ve lived with a regular drop in sink for all of my 38 years so I think I’ll survive.
I tackled the installation of the counter last week and for the most part that’s easy – but I had to deal with the rough edge on one end:

Thankfully there’s little kits that are sold right by the countertops for just this problem. It was nearly $20 so that cheap countertop get a little more expensive, but still, pretty good.
It comes with wood pieces and laminate for the edges:

First you take those nailed in jobbies in the photo up above out, so the edge is flat. Then you nail the little bitty piece to the back to fill in that part:

And then you’re supposed to do the same underneath with the long piece. This is all so the laminate edge has something to stick to. Well, this wall and the cabinets were pretty much exactly 72 inches (which I don’t think we did on purpose, but it was a nice accident so cabinets and counters were easy to find), but this meant there wasn’t enough of an overhang to add that piece of wood underneath the counter. So I just didn’t add it – we’ll see how this hold up without it.
The next step was a little scary – you take an iron and use it to “glue” the laminate on the edge of the countertop. I didn’t get pictures of this cause I was sweating, but I put the iron on medium heat and used a lot of steam (just as I do with webbing tape when “sewing”). I just steamed it like crazy and was careful not to hold the iron down on the laminate too long:

It worked great! There’s stuff on the back of the laminate that melts and glues it right on. (You can hear it “crackle.”) I couldn’t get it to budge once it was dry. But as you see above, it’s not a perfect fit. The next step was to use a wood file and knock down the excess laminate along there.
I didn’t have a wood file and thought I could just file it down with a chisel. I was wrong. :) It didn’t work. It was about 9 p.m. and I so didn’t want to run out to get the annoying wood file, so I started trying anything I could find. It went…OK. ;) These heavy duty scissors worked for cutting vinyl tiles so I figured they would work for this and they did:

But I couldn’t get close enough to the edge to get it flush. I was also afraid I was going to damage the counter by messing with it so much, so I put a line of my Frogtape along there to protect it:

Then I went back at it again – this time with tin snips. :) With those I was able to get much closer to the edge. And then I got it real flush by ending with my original plan, the chisel:

You can see there why I put the tape down – it really did help and the counters are just fine even after all that abuse. :) After all those tools and the time it took to get it all done, I just should have made the run to the hardware store, but whatever. I was already in my pj’s and not going anywhere.
The counter is actually quite cool, I love the way it looks! It’s got the “3D” look to it – it has a very minor texture that’s supposed to look like granite. We have similar counters upstairs and they get mistaken for granite on first glance all the time. They’ve also held up GREAT, so I know it will be perfect in the basement:

So I know we still need to cut the hole for the sink but I wanted to make sure it was staying put for the time being, so I got some pillows to lay on and got underneath and secured it to the cabinets using screws:

Nice picture thanks to the Bub. ;) It was not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done. Remember when doing this part to use screws that aren’t too long so they don’t go through the top of the laminate! Yikes.
Then…it was time for paint. Why must EVERY SINGLE PROJECT involve so much paint? WHY. I’ve done a coat of primer and one coat of glossy white on everything so far:

Yes, the kitchenette also serves as the basketball court. :)
The cabinets still needs another good sanding and one more coat of paint, but I was tired people. So. much. painting. 
Next steps are to install the hardware on the cabinets, continue the baseboard around the bottom, install the sink and then decide what I’m doing on that wall above. First I need to decide on uppers or no uppers – I wasn’t going to do any but more storage wouldn’t be a horrible thing, right? I’m thinking maybe skinny ones one easy side of the lights, then maybe shelving between. Or just shelves and no cabinets? No idea. It will come to me eventually.
So it’s not quite a full after yet, but a halfway after still makes me very, very happy:

We are just giddy about the thought of a kitchen sink down there. I swear we’re all just moving down to the basement. We’ll be back upstairs for the summer. Or not, it’s nice and cool down there in the hot months. :)
Have you ever installed countertops? Do you have this granite lookalike stuff? My dream one day would be soapstone counters, but until then the laminate holds up great! Hopefully I’ll be able to show you this space with a sink soon!
P.S. This color was called Labrador Granite, here’s a link to a larger piece.

The “This will be easy” curse

Today’s tale is one that started out with, “This will only take a few minutes…”

Dangit, I know better to say that – out loud or in my head. It’s the kiss of death my friends. From now on I’m just going to start out every project with “Oh this will take five times longer than I think it will!” and I’m sure it will be the opposite. It’s how I do.

This is one of those projects I wouldn’t have even blogged about but when it became a pain in my butt I figured I would share. It started with a mirror. I’ve been looking for one for our basement staircase for about six months. You may remember the wood planked wall I installed there last summer. I loved it as it was for a long time, but finally decided I wanted to put something on there. Specifically a white mirror in a fun shape.

So I looked for said white mirror in a fun shape for months. Finally found it about a month ago (at HomeGoods), brought it home, then realized there was a crack in it.

Wahhh wahhhhhhh.

I’d seen another one while there, so I took it back to exchange it but they didn’t have any more in white. They did have pink!:

And I had to pay an additional ten bucks for the pink version! (Cat not included.) Pink is worth ten dollars? But now I was hooked and I wanted the dang mirror, so I got it.

This is where the “this will be so easy came in” – I saw there were little screws on the back, so I figured I could just remove them and the mirror would come out. Then I could spray paint the frame and have this sucker hanging 20 minutes later.

Well, 20-something screws later:

I realized the back was glued on. Wah. WAHHH. So why the screws I ask you? WHY.

So…I had two options. Spend an hour trying to tape off the curves and details of the frame so I could spray paint it, or just paint the thing. I went with paint. I should have just taped it off. :)

It took forever. I used white chalk paint so I didn’t sand or anything (just cleaned it well), but it took at least three coats:

I stopped counting at three anyway.

And oh yeah, he’s not helping. I think he thinks he is.

OK, chalk paint is great, I’ve used it many times and love it. But the one draw back is it dries so quick. I think it dried even faster over the plastic. So you have to work quickly. Another thing about this paint is it leaves brush marks (which usually don’t bother me), but I wanted this to be smooth and shiny. Not happening:

My paint kept “pulling” – I would go back over a spot to try to smooth it out and the paint would gunk up, even thought I had just painted it. It was a little frustrating. I did sand lightly between coats to get rid of a lot of it.

The good thing about this paint is that it is easily wiped off with just a wet rag. So no razor needed to get it all off the mirror when I was done – I just wiped it off. That kind of rocks.

All in all what I thought would take 20 minutes took an afternoon. I’d do a coat, go do something, sand it down, do another, go do something…you get the idea.

I’m not thrilled with the finished product either – it looks a bit messy to me close up. But from far away it looks great!:

And in the world of DIY sometimes that’s all you need!

I love the white pop on the dark wood! It makes me want to add more white things, but I’m keeping it to just this. We have enough going on down there with the gallery wall:

After I hung it my husband went down the stairs and told me how much he loved the new mirror. When my husband notices a project I feel like a get a gold star or something. (In his defense, things tend to change a lot around here.)

I think my favorite part is when I’m talking to my kiddo or husband I can see them either at the top of the steps:

Or at the bottom:

You can see the big map art there at the bottom of the stairs too. :)

I still have a few things I’d like to do this staircase – beef up the handles a bit and install thicker baseboards. And after that I think I can call this little area done. Wow. Can you believe it??

Do you have the “this will be a quick project” curse too?

The Laundry Room: Making it work

Hello everybody! Hope your week is going well! I can hardly believe it’s Thursday already. Crazy pants.

I’ve been working on purging the basement (you can see one of my big projects earlier this week here) and it was when I moved on to the laundry room that I realized I haven’t shared progress in here since last year.

It’s been a year since I’ve blogged about this space when I built the shelf behind the washer and dryer:

When we got the new set I knew I wanted a top loading washer, so the little shelf along the back gives us a spot for some items we need within reach and it hides all the ugly stuff behind the set. :) 

But we’ve made some updates to make this a more functional space over the past year and although the room is still very much in between, I wanted to share some of them!

The room is smaller than we originally planned -- we had to work with beams in the basement so this room get a little tighter. It’s just over eight by five feet, which is still a dream compared to the mud/laundry room space we had upstairs before. A DREAM.

But with the washer and dryer taking up most of that space and a door to the storage room, I’ve had to be smart about storage and any additions in here.

We’ve always used one of those wooden drying racks that you open up on the floor, but this hanging rack from IKEA works just as well (and takes up way less space!):

I wanted small laundry baskets that would stay in here all the time and last year I found ADORABLE polka dotted ones at the container store:

One for lights, one for darks. It’s so great to just grab one and just dump it in the laundry. And they’re tall and skinny so they fit perfectly right next to the dryer.

I’ve added some storage in here so the shelf behind the washer and dryer only holds the necessities now. My glass jar for the detergent and a little box hides the dryer sheets:

 

I like the necessities to be cute, alright? :)

We moved the ironing board down here and it hangs next to the door:

We set it up right outside in the family room and watch TV while ironing. It makes it suck a little less. ;)

You can see a lot of the to do’s in the photo above – I installed that cabinet to use some of the awkward space in here and it needs to be finished up. I have ideas for the wall above it too. The storage room door needs to be painted (it will be black like the rest of the doors) and the trim all needs to be painted too.

One thing I did to help make this room a little bigger when we finished the space was to push it out to the family room area just a bit more than planned (to the right):

That allowed me to put double doors on the room instead of a standard door. I LOVE it – I can easily carry baskets or armfuls of laundry through the door without banging into them. (And yes, they still need hardware. On the list.)

I still love love love the hexagon tile we put in here – it was so inexpensive and looks great. It is chilly on bare feet though so I have small mats in front of the washer and dryer:

I’m always looking for one rug that would be the right size/color but it’s hard to find. These get dirty really easily so I don’t think they’ll stay forever.

And obviously we installed two small cabinets on the wall (that need to be painted) – I didn’t want it to be all cabinets and I didn’t want just shelving (I wanted some of the stuff to be out of sight), so we went with two. Initially I was planning on hanging a rod between them to hang clothes but quickly realized I didn’t want to look at that all the time. (And we really don’t keep clothes down here.)

So now I’m planning a mix of both hidden and open storage – shelves between the two cabinets. I’m also planning on bringing in more color to this space and doing some kind of treatment to that wall. Haven’t decided just what yet.

There’s still so much I want to do but it’s already wonderfully functional and it’s come a long way from how it looked just over a year ago:

Compared to how it looks now:

And yes…a year later I still LOVE having a laundry room in the basement. It was the right move for us but it may not be for everyone.

Do you have a big laundry room? Is it combined with your mud room or does it stand alone? This one is way bigger than the space we had in our old mud/laundry combo but I’m still always trying to use every bit of it as best as I can.

That space under the stairs

Hey all! How was your weekend? We played quite a bit on Saturday and then yesterday I worked my tail off. I’m still nursing a sore back from all the hard labor. :)

You may have noticed that I stalled out on the house purge I started a few months ago. I was on a roll for a while and then I just couldn’t go through one. more. drawer. There’s only so much of it I enjoy and then I need do other stuff for awhile.

But I’m BACK! I finished the kitchen (including the pantry, scary!) and then moved on to the basement. This space is going to be cake compared to years past when it was unfinished. Shudder. But so far I’ve only worked on spaces you can’t even see – closet and storage spaces.

I’m SO EXCITED about a change I made to the area behind this door:

So. This is the storage space under the stairs. When we started finishing the basement early last year one of the first steps was to move all of the Christmas stuff into this spot. Early this year I majorly purged my holiday decor and made it so we had even more floor space for vacuums and such.

I have a LOT of Christmas decor. I love it but sometimes just want to get rid of half of it. But I do write this thing called a blog, and my son is still young and very much into holiday decorating. I figure in just a few years I’ll be begging him to help with decor so for now I deal with the bins and don’t sweat it. In no time at all we won’t use half of it and I’ll be wanting these days back. :)

Well, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems like till about March I’ll find little bits of Christmas around the house. And because I’m lazy busy I just throw them on top of the bins instead of putting them away. So the Christmas closet became this:

Earlier this year I took some advice from my friend Carmen and took some of the items out of the bins and hung them instead. (Check out her awesome holiday closet here!) It did help – I hung some of the bulky greenery up on hooks and ended up getting rid of a ton of bins between this and purging.

But it wasn’t enough. It still became a mess because of my laziness being busy and all:

So fast forward to some progress in the basement that happened last week – we had the cabinets for the kitchenette installed:

More glorious storage! Whoot! I’m still not sure if we’ll do small uppers or not. Next up I need to buy and install the countertop and sink and then trim out and paint the cabinets. Even with all that still left to do I’ve already started filling them. ;)

And not even two minutes after they were installed I stood there and realized I had completely spaced it – my plan for years (YEARS!) has been very specific for this space – I had planned on a regular cabinet (for the sink) and then an under cabinet fridge with a smaller cabinet on the side.

Well I totally, completely, just plain forgot, about the fridge. I’m getting old remember? Argh. There wasn’t much we could do about it either – we couldn’t return the cabinet that had already been installed.

So, I had to come up with a new solution. Our dream has always been to have a fridge down here, for snacks and drinks during movies, or for hubs to grab while he’s working (his office is down there). So I got to thinking about that messy closet – and came up with a new idea for the space.

And after hours of cleaning out the garage and moving stuff around and dragging a LOT of bins up and cleaning of the storage area, I ended up with this:

There’s a bonus to my mix up – to install a fridge under a counter you need to get a a specific one that vents out the front, and those are not cheap. The least expensive one I’ve found is $400-something at Home Depot. And the more I thought about it, I knew we’d want a fridge for more than just drinks (the version at HD was just for beverages). This one is just a standard mini fridge ($100-something instead) with space for food too. And a freezer!

For PIZZA ROLLS.

Awwww yeah.

This closet is actually nearly 50 square feet of storage space – and I LOATHE wasted space, so I wanted to make it even more functional. I picked up a couple super cheap bookcases ($17 each) and put them inside as well:

Our built ins in the family room down there are awesome but not wide enough for games, so this is a perfect solution. Now all the games are in one spot and easier to find (I had them in a dresser before).

There’s still a few things I’d like to do – I still need to get an outlet installed in here (I have the fridge plugged into a heavy duty extension cord now but hope to have the outlet installed this week).

And I still feel like the vertical space is wasted – so my plan is to stack the bookcases (securing them to the wall of course) where the fridge is now, then placing that off to the left. I’ll have room for a little cart or something next to it to hold plates and such. I won’t be able to move stuff around till I get the outlet installed.

That way the fridge will have even more room to breathe in there – it’s got more than enough clearance around it now but it will have more moved over (with the open space behind it).

I did my research before moving the fridge in this space – make sure you do the same before doing something similar. It’s a large closet and we don’t keep clothes in here obviously (not a good idea near a fridge). You want to make sure there’s enough breathing room around it. (I asked numerous electrician friends/my dad and all said it was fine.)

Eventually the microwave will go out the kitchenette, but for now it will stay in here. This is like a new room in our house! The Bub and I were SO excited about it last night, we may have made some pizza rolls to celebrate. :)

Check out the before and after:

See why my back hurts now? I think I moved about 12 bins up. We don’t have quite enough room for one more big one in the garage so it’s still back there in the closet. (We have a door in hubby’s office to access that side.)

I’ll show you the garage organization soon – that space is still a pit and next on my list after the house is decluttered. One step at a time.

Do you have a little storage space like this under your stairs? I always think of all the possibilities – a wine cellar, a hide out for the kids, bookcases – all of it sounds awesome to me. Now ours is a bit of Christmas/storage/game/kitchenette room. Love. What do you do with yours?

Bright basement bathroom (done!)

Good Monday to ya! How was your weekend? I was fighting a cold all weekend but managed to fit in two movies and plenty of DIY, so that’s a good one for me. :)

I’m continuing my no-spend August by wrapping up a HUGE project. I love the no-spend idea – not only do I save money when I do this (no impromptu trips to HomeGoods!) but I get a lot done. Stuff I’ve been putting off for months!

Our basement bathroom is one of those projects. It was thisclose to done anyway, and I had everything I needed on hand…so this one is checked off the list! WHOOT.

Let’s look back at how it looked a few months ago:

If you’ve been around for awhile you know we finished our basement last year. We did it slowly so we could pay cash and it took about six months total. The basics are in and everything is coming together beautifully, but there’s still a LOT we want to do down there.

So we had it finished but the basement bathroom was still incomplete, as you can see above. The floors were installed earlier this year, along with the main fixtures – the toilet and vanity. Then I showed you how I installed some storage in the form of DIY floating shelves:

I LOVE those shelves – I’m still so happy with how that came together.

But there were a few things left to do – back when I painted all the doors black in the basement I pooped out and didn’t do the back of the bathroom door. Soooo…I got that done:

Three coats and done!

Back when we had the electrical work done for the basement I knew I wanted two lights above the sink, so we guesstimated where the vanity was going to go. Well the outlet for that room ended up being right in the middle of the sink (right where the mirror went) so the guys came out a few months ago and moved the outlet (and one of the lights) for me.

They patched up the drywall and I just hung the mirror back over it and left it:

So yesterday I sanded it down and touched up that paint and a few other spots in the room. I also caulked the rest of the baseboards down there as well. OK, maybe I wasn’t thisclose to done. ;)

I used the mirror that used to be in our upstairs powder room -- it was shimmery brown so it needed a redo bad. I taped it off to prep for spray paint:

I’ve seen a lot of people not taping off and just using a razor to clean up on mirrors, but with spray paint that’s too messy (for me). So I covered it with newspaper, taped it all down and checked out my spray paint stash to decide on what to do:

I started with the satin nickel color and it was pretty, but when I got it down there it was so…boring. ;) The lights, faucet and mirror were all the same. Then I took it back outside and just went with a basic white – but, duh, that was pretty boring too. I wanted a pop of color on that wall and kept looking to my spray paint to find the right color (not spending money on DIY and all.)

Well I finally found the color I wanted in my regular paints:

It’s the same aubusson blue color I used on this project:

It was PERFECT. And it only took three tries. ;)

The blue brings the color in the towels and shower curtain over to that side of the room:

You can see all the sources for these items in this post (most was from Target).

Originally I planned on using our pedestal sink from upstairs in this space, but when it came time to install it I realized I really wanted something more substantial and something with storage. So I shopped around and found a really inexpensive vanity at Lowe’s that worked perfectly:

It’s really shallow but the sink juts out so it’s still a great size. It’s perfect for this skinny bathroom. (You can find it here online.)

I’m pretty thrilled with how this little space came together! Well…it’s not exactly little -- it’s just long and skinny:

It’s about 11 feet by four feet -- there was no other way to set up the room with the beams in the basement and the rough in plumbing. Also we had to make it this long to incorporate a support column into the wall. When the door is open it goes right near the vanity so there’s actually not much room to spare.

I had a mantra in my head the whole time I was finishing off this space -- “It’s just a basement bathroom.” :) So I went pretty basic with the finishes – the faucet, shower head and lights were all basic, inexpensive finds. We spent a little more on the toilet since this is in the basement – we wanted something that will hold up well (since the plumbing down here has to work against gravity).

Even though we didn’t splurge on much, I think the space turned out beautifully. One thing I don’t regret at all in the building process – I made sure we had a TON of lights in this space. Early on I thought it may be overkill but since I’ve realized it’s a great thing in a room without natural light:

We have a total of five lights in this space – recessed lights in the shower and by the door, the light in the fan and two over the sink. I love the look of the two lights over the sink – I did the same in our upstairs powder room. :)

I do have one more thing to do in here – paint all the trim (baseboards and door trim). But I have to do that in the entire basement so I’m going to wait till I can knock it all out at once. (That will be a fun day. Want to come over and help?)

Here’s a look at the before and after side-by-side – my favorite. ;)

I’d still like to add some art or something to that big wall at some point. I have an idea in mind but for now I’m just thrilled to have this space done! I’m knocking things off the to-do list and it feels so good! I may do these no-spend months more often!! (Although I’m starting to get a HomeGoods itch.)

If you have any questions about this space that I didn’t answer, let me know and I’ll get you info in the comments!