Pantry & Wine Storage Area

I have been doing some research and looking at my options for the pantry and wine storage area in the basement, since the space is now screaming at me every time I pass it. I need a mix of closed storage for my miscellaneous pantry items and wine storage that can be open or closed. I was looking at the Ikea hackers website  when I discovered that Ikea in fact makes a  metal wine rack for its Besta line. I like the Besta line, which is a modular storage for the living room. The nice thing is that they offer the wall shelves with a metal cleat that attaches to the wall (very similar to their kitchen cabinets). The difference is that the Besta are 15 3/4″ deep instead of 12 3/4″ for the kitchen cabinets. The system comes in some suitable sizes but I am not sure if they are quite as sturdy as the kitchen cabinets (which has me a little worried especially if I fill them up with wine). I used Ikea’s Besta Builder and Kitchen Builder to get a general idea of my options. One of the benefits to the Besta is that with the deeper box you could close the cabinet doors even if it was full of wine. The kitchen cabinets would have to be left open without doors since the wine bottles are about 12-14″ long.

Option 1: Besta w/ White Glass Doors

Option 1: I‘ve used the Besta for the 4 upper cabinets, plus a 5th cabinet that would sit on the counter and then a Besta shelf with legs that would sit on the floor. This would leave a gap above it and below the counter and I would loose the back 9″ behind it since it is only 15″ deep. I am also liking the dark brown/black boxes with the white door.

Option 2: Besta with Red Glossy Doors

Option 2: Similar layout to Option 1 but with open shelves for wine storage and bright red shiny doors. I am thinking if I went this route I might use white boxes instead. hmmm…

Option 3: Using Ikea Kitchen Cabinets

Option 3: This is using Ikea kitchen cabinets. The three upper cabinets to the left would be open (without doors). The lower 3 cabinets represent the safe, the fridge & the freezer. This would work although I would end up with white boxes and I’m not sure which door I would use since they discontinued my favorite door.

Sketch Elevation in AutoCAD

I also put the elevation and plan into autocad to check some dimensions. Now that I have double checked the measurements I can pick a fridge and freezer (which I have been reluctant to do until now). It also shows me that I’ve got to deal with the gap above the cabinets. This section of wall has plywood instead of the horizontal beadboard, so I don’t think it will look nice if I keep it exposed. Depending on the color of the upper cabinets maybe I will paint it to match. hmmm…so much to decide.

Our Little Man, Rocking Out in the Mancave

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend! We managed to get some work done in the basement and find time to hang out outside. : )

Two weekends ago we took a break from some of the more boring basement tasks and hung up the guitars on the wall. Is it really a mancave? More of a boy cave? Mr. S. has been waiting patiently for the last 11 3/4 years to find a space for his guitar, bass and amp. Well we finally have the perfect spot! The boys had been rocking out up in the dining room/study area, but it was really too tight and not suited for an amp. So now they can REALLY rock out down here. Sam and Maisie have also formed a band called the ‘Weirdo Fish’. There are a couple of song in the works but no record deal yet. Maisie has been joining in on drums on occasion (which are a set of old stools). There is already talk of a drum set. There is still much to do in the space, but fortunately the kids are happy.

Mechanical Closet Door: Maybe chalkboard paint?

This door is opposite the guitar wall. I was planning on finishing it off with beadboard, similar to the back door. But while I was down there this weekend I was thinking that maybe I would use chalkboard paint instead. I thought it could be a good place for the kids to draw and work on their song list.

Workroom w/Drywall

Workroom w/ Painted Walls

Workroom w/ Shelves

This past weekend we rolled up our sleeves and got to work on some of the outstanding projects left. We primed and painted the Workroom, moved the shelves and built a workbench.

I think this is the most boring color I have ever chosen! We went with the same warm off-white that we used as a whitewash for the beadboard walls.  I considered lots of colors, but in the end it is a dark basement room, that we will be using for lots of projects, so I thought I would keep it neutral. I am still planning on painting the pegboard a fun color as an accent. I am also considering painting the center of the concrete floor, to give it a little more contrast and even out the very rough look (old paint mixed with old adhesive). Please excuse the messy state of the room. Believe it or not a lot of stuff is in the right general spot, but it needs lots of tweaking (never mind making it pretty)!

New Workbench

We also managed to make and install a new workbench for the bay area. We have had the kit for a couple of years, but never got around to putting it together. It is by 2×4 Basics and it consists of the heavy duty plastic legs and screws, then you buy the 2x4s and plywood to make the bench to whatever size you need. Given the final size we needed, we only used 2-2x4s, 2 2x3s, 1 piece of plywood and an old hollow core door cut down to size. It has space for a shelf in the middle but we decided against it, to give us room for larger storage. It went together in under an hour, once we had all the parts, although it is definitely a 2 person job (to help hold everything together as you screw). I would definitely recommend it! It is super sturdy and quite affordable!

Future Counter & Pantry Area

A good chunk of our basement work has involved moving stuff from one corner to another, to make way for all of the work. Now that most of the walls are complete, we can finally begin putting things in the right space! We are far from done with prettying the space up, but it is big step forward to actually put most of the stuff in the right general vicinity, which means that we finally managed to clear out the pantry area. There will be a wood counter in this area with an under counter fridge and freezer. In addition there should be space for a small cabinet or roll out for extra pantry storage. I have been waiting to buy the fridge and freezer until after we had space, so I am excited about filling out this space!

Winecork Backsplash via Pinterest

Bottlecap Backsplash via Pinterest

I haven’t decided on a backsplash yet. I am considering wine corks or bottlecaps (or maybe both).  Definitely something fun! We decided to use our old upper cabinets in the workroom, so I need to also decide on what we want to do with upper storage. I could do open shelves, but I am a little worried about dust collecting. I also have to contend with the pipes in the ceiling. I would also like to have a fair amount of wine storage above. I’ve been looking at old wooden crates as well.

What do you think?

Carpet Tile Installed in Main Basement Space

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. We spent a good part of the weekend trying to catch up on EVERYTHING. I don’t think we succeeded but we did manage to get a few things done. The taxes are ready, there is carpet tile in part of the basement, I have dug out the area for the sandbox and Maisie’s long overdue car bed is painted and pinstriped. Unfortunately the list is still pretty long. The good news is that the kids are stocked up on candy, LOVE Easter Egg hunts and are generally a happy pair.

Back to the carpet tile! I decided to start on the larger of the two main spaces in the basement (i.e. the one that wasn’t full of stuff). There is still trim to paint and things to do, but I REALLY wanted the space to start feeling more finished so I went ahead with the install.

Carpet Tile Samples

I bought this carpet tile (which is remnants and seconds from larger orders) for $.69 sf from an online store called Carpet USA (with $99 shipping). The deal was by far the best option I found. I wrote about the exciting adventure of picking it up a while ago. Previously I had pulled several pieces out to check out the pattern and to see how it was going to sit on the concrete floor. When pulling out some more pieces, there were definitely a few that had imperfections (which I knew could happen). Mostly it meant a darker color yarn was visible in a spot or two. There was one that had a loose piece of yarn sticking up. I decided to put those to the side and use them in less conspicuous places if at all since I bought some extra.

Laying Out The Carpet Tile Pattern

Laying Out the Carpet Tile

I started out by laying out a row of carpet tiles in each direction in a cross pattern to determine the best layout (I had done a rough layout in autocad, but for the actual installation this is actually easier, because you can fuss with it to find the best areas to cut the tiles). I decided that I wanted a full tile where the carpet tile meets the vinyl tile in the laundry area and I thought I would start with a full row on the perpendicular window wall. This meant some cutting on the walls perpendicular to the window wall for the doorways and closet.

Cutting the Carpet Tile

Cutting the Carpet Tile

I still had left over utility blades from cutting the vinyl tile, so I just used these. I found that the blades get dull even quicker with carpet tile than with the vinyl tile.  To cut them I put the carpet tile I wanted to cut under the adjacent full carpet tile. Then I just cut along that line following the edge of the adjacent carpet tile. This worked really well for the straight cuts. For the cuts around the doorways I lined the carpet tile up with the wall and used my metal level as a straight edge and cut one side and then the other. I downside to the carpet tile is that you can’t mark it like you can with tile. This worked pretty well, just took a little bit of tile (and a bunch of blades).

Carpet Tile in Place (now I need to decide what color to paint the door)

Gluing The Carpet Tile

The carpet place had said that we wouldn’t need to glue the carpet tile down or attach them together. I wasn’t so sure since when I have used FLOR in the past they give you stickers to hold everything together and I have found that you definitely need these.  But I had my samples out for a while and I noticed that these stayed together very well without anything. They are thinner than the FLOR tile but somehow whatever the rubbery substance that is on the bottom they stay put.  In our installation we are going wall to wall so I figured that it would help hold everything together. So now that it is down, they feel very secure, but at the same time I can pick one up easily and put it back in place with a problem, which is GREAT!

As you can see the carpet install went pretty well. Now I need to decide what color to paint the door. I was going to go with blue, but with the carpet tile I think I might need to pick a different color. I also need to install beadboard on the closet door to make it less noticeable.

* To see all of the posts about our basement click here.

Beadboard and Beam Basement Ceiling

My neck (and Mr. S’s) is a little sore but the ceiling is painted! Yeah! It took a couple of coats of ceiling paint but it is finished. We used 1 coat on the beadboard panels themselves (which were already white) and 2 coats on the wood beams. Mr S. manned the paintbrush and I used the small roller. The great news about this being finished is that we are one step closer to installing carpet. We still have a fair amount of trim to paint (mostly in the windows) but most of the large surfaces are finished, which feels great.

More White Ceiling & Trim

The Work Room

We also managed to clear out some space in the work room so our contractors can install drywall this week. Besides drywall they are going to relocate a few of our old florescent fixtures for the room and put them on a switch for us. We are not going to put a ceiling in here right now and I don’t want to spend more than we have to in this space, so we thought reusing the old lights in here made the most sense (at least for now).

The Work Room Plan

The plan for this room is that it will be for using all of our wood working tools and for house projects. It is hard to see the space right now because we have shelves awkwardly placed in the middle of the room but there should be space for:

Front Bay Area for Work Bench

1. Work Bench: This will go in the front bay and have some open shelving below to hold some of our power tools. I actually already own the legs for this and it should be a fairly quick install.

Long Wall for Shelving

2. Long Wall of Shelves: We haven’t decided what kind (whether we will reuse our old wood ikea shelves or the old wire shelves that were there before). This will hold paint, wood & miscellaneous house parts. The old shelves were never used very efficiently, so I hope to remedy this with the new layout.

3. Peg Board: We are going to install peg board on the short wall next to the utility sink. This will be good for some of the small hand tools. I plan on painting it blue.

4. Work Table: Fingers crossed there will be enough space for a medium size work table in the middle of the room. This would be on casters so it could move around. When we do some of our bigger projects there are times that I really need some space to set out my work.

Utility Sink

5. Utility Sink: This is already installed and ready to go! I’ve already made good use of this. It is a little alcove behind the shower. I went with an inexpensive model from Home Depot. I should have upgraded to a better made model. We had to shim the front legs to get the drainage to work at the bottom of the sink. It also required lots of extra support to keep it sitting firmly.

* To see all of the posts about our basement click here.