Unfinished Basement: Main Area

AFTER: Main area of our unfinished basement

behind those curtains is the laundry area

oh yeah, that shelving there with pictures is the one that we got from my mother in law, she was gonna throw it so we took it. When my husband and I assembled it,  first I put it right beside the couch, then beside the TV, then finally beside the  hibernating treadmill. 

That's how I decorated the main area of our unfinished basement. I still want to add a rug sometime and maybe add some shades to the lighting. I didn't buy any furnitures at all for this project. All of the furnitures are all our old furnitures except for the shelving that we got from my mother in law. I refused to buy. Like the TV, speakers and drawer in this picture, that's my husbands when he was still single. The only thing I had to pay for , for decorating our unfinished basement is the fabric from ikea. From home depot, I bought the two concrete floor sealer, two concrete paint for basement ( I still have some left),  wood used for curtains, hooks, and a bunch of twistys. If you need furnitures, if you're a huge cheapskate like me, buy from secondhand/used furniture stores. Do your research because some secondhand/used furniture stores can still be a bit pricey for a used furniture. Garage sales, online too, there are so many different websites that sell used furnitures for a really good price. But hold on! hold your horses! before thinking of buying why not look around your house, maybe there are furnitures that you stock in the garage or hidden in the attic that you can use. If you don't have any, you can go ask around, your parents, sisters, friends, co-workers maybe they have furnitures that they have been thinking of throwing, it maybe a perfect match for your project. Maybe its not perfect yet but you can make it perfect with a little bit of painting here and there. It doesn't hurt to ask. 

Anyways, It may seem that this project is done, but its not! I have the laundry area, you know behind the curtains. That's why its behind the curtains because its still ugly. Then the low headroom area which we are turning into an office/craft area. But after all the work I did in the main area, I guess I deserve to put down my tool bag for now and enjoy my work for now.

Please do leave comments and questions. 

thanks for dropping by. ttyl.

Unfinished Basement :Decorating

Even before we moved to our house, I already have major plans for our unfinished basement. I know i'm gonna have to fix it without having it fully finished because I  know we don't have the budget for it. But I really really want to fix it and make it look prettier than some fully finished basements. How can I possibly turn this unfinished basement to a usable space and make it look good without the framing and drywall. Every time I go to our unfinished basement, I think of my big plans for it, but the harder I look at it, I was beginning to doubt myself. And on top of that, I had to come up with a plan that I can turn our unfinished basement into a usable space on a shoestring budget! goodluck with that! Ah Well, I had a dream of making it pretty, so I did it my way! on a shoestring budget!

This is how our unfinished basement looked like before we even moved to our house.

That is the space under the stairs, looks like a storage for me. Right?

That is going to be the Laundry area

Main area of the unfinished basement. 

When you go down to the basement, going to your right is this kind of a low-ish headroom area and through that door is a cold room. Call it whatever you want, its a storage room for me.

Then we moved in....

with all our stuff more like my husbands stuff and my daughters

this is the hallway. The first thing you see when you come down to the basement. More of our stuff.  Bins! bins! bins!

this is how the low headroom area looks like now. We will turn this into a work/craft area sometime soon . Dont worry I will show how that turned out.

The other side of the work/craft area. Lots of crap! I wanna cry!

The laudry area now.

This is the main area now. I started painting the wall white using concrete paint on the side. Before I  started anything else in our unfinished basement first thing I did is I painter the concrete floors with a basement floor sealer that I bought from home depot. Go to the paint section and ask them for a basement floor sealer. 

For the walls, I used a concrete paint for basements.  This is the first coat of paint I did on the wall . I had to do it few more times. I made sure I painted it thick to cover the holes in the concrete walls.

I really used the space under the stairs as a storage. As you can see our treadmill is hibernating in there which used to be resting in the middle of the basement! yeah thats how I workout! :-)

This is how I covered the walls. Since framing, insulation and drywall is out of the picture, this is how I covered the walls of our unfinished basement.

Materials: hooks, twisty, wood,  and fabric.

The fabric, I sew it into curtains. If you want to make it easier you can use white plastic and you dont even have to hang it like curtains. You can staple it into the wall. If sewing is not an option, you can still use fabric, get the right measurements and staple it into the walls. I used white fabric and paint. I want to make the unfinished basement as bright as possible.  

From dark concrete grey walls with all walls covered and painted.  It is now bright as a sunshine! Our little princess can now play! 

Its not even done yet and she's taken ownership already! 

tadaaaa!!!! this is how the main area looks now!

All the walls in the main area are all covered and painted. Crap mostly set aside, donated, recycled or thrown out. But this project is still far from over. I need furnitures to put those crap that you see on the floor. I have a cabinet waiting for me at my mother in laws house. Its free! yey! see you on my next blog when I'm done decorating our unfinished basement. 
hey let me know what you think!
ttyl!!!!