The Basement Renovation

Mike and I are both (unfortunately) the same breed of indecisive, shall I say, commitment phobic people. We've both been known to agonize about purchases and other minor decisions for far longer than appropriate.... which is why I'm so excited that after only, maybe 6 months of contractor visits and intense deliberation, we're having the basement renovated!! 

When we moved to Highclere I'd say our basement was a halfway finished space. The ceiling was open so you could see all the joists/wires/pipes but it had all been painted white so it didn't look terrible. There was a pretty workable layout with drywall in place, but there were a bunch of strange openings/holes in the walls. We're talking closets without doors, weirdly open little storage nooks, and my favorite the "built in bookcases" (HAHA) which were really just two janky bookcases stuffed in a hole in the wall. The ceilings were pretty low and there was a somewhat severe slope in the floor. Our home inspector estimated it to be about a 6 inch differential from one end of the room to the other.Eek! On the flip side, arguably the nicest bathroom in the house is inexplicably in the basement. (??) So basically the space was a real mixed bag but we were very excited about the renovation potential.

So here we are now a few weeks into renovation. The basement isn't finished yet BUT lots of great progress has been made and I've included some subpar iphone photos below as proof! The room still needs to be painted (as evidenced by my now standard 15 paint samples) and we're hoping to put barn doors at the back of the room but I'm delighted by everything that's been done so far.

 For my next trick I'll be trying to talk Mike into a large luxurious but still classy sectional sofa...