Before and After

Before this week, our basement looked like this:

Well, actually, when we first bought our house, we had carpeting in the basement and used it as a workout room/computer room/storage/temporary apartment for my cousin.  But our house is 100 years old and the shady waterproofing job someone did on our house way before we bought it finally couldn't hold during some heavy rains the spring that Cate was born.  So we ripped up the carpet and just let it sit for a year.  Then we had it waterproofed the way a 100 year old house should be waterproofed last spring (with jackhammers and waterproof exterior walls and a lifetime warranty and stuff).  Our intention was to make a basement playroom.

We finally got around to ordering carpet (we wanted carpet tiles because they are easy to install yourself and if we spill things and stain the carpet, we can just lift up the tile and put down a new one (we ordered quite a few extra for this purpose). 

Eric, Cate, and I (but mostly Eric) spent a lot of time down there these last couple of weeks getting things done.  Thankfully Eric had a few more vacation days to spare before the end of the year.

The result?  The fruits of our labors?  The place where I'm pretty sure we'll be spending most of the nasty days this winter?

Introducing---- Our Brand New Basement Playroom!

Plenty of storage for the many, many, toys we have already managed to accumulate.

An old coffee table (rescued from some random neighbor's trash) makes a great art table.

And many of Cate's outdoor toys have found a winter home in the playroom.

Her sand and water table is now full of dried beans and pasta to play with (since she's so tactile anyway).

Her swing is secured tightly into a support beam (she loves that she can swing and watch Elmo on TV at the same time).

Even her princess cafe table is a good place for a snack!

The playroom is already a hit...Cate didn't want to leave it to come upstairs for dinner.  We still have some work to do: we got rid of the drop ceiling in there so everything is exposed and we need to clean that up a bit, the bathroom also needs some sprucing up, and I need to do something about fun window treatments.  I'm already making my wish list for things I want to buy from the children's section at IKEA to help finish off the space. 

Now all we need is for Christmas to get here so Santa can bring that toy kitchen and shopping cart!

~Melody :-)