Basement Progress!

Let's start with some before pictures!  Now don't get excited, there are no 'after' pictures yet... it's going to take us some time.  First up, the front exterior.  This picture is actually after we took down 2 giant bushes that covered the bottom third of the big picture window.  You can see the little hole, B was getting started figuring out where the window would be.  Unfortunately, we couldn't center it on the window above, because that wouldn't work for the interior space, but it still works!

Here's the playroom!  Yep, it's small, this is really the whole thing...  As you can see the previous owner loved brown...brown carpet, brown trim, brown light (already swapped out, because B couldn't stand it), and brown walls (as a bonus- they are burlap covered!  That's going to be a pain to repair the walls after pulling it off....)

Here are the stairs coming down.  They did have storage under them, which is great...but well, I have something else in mind.

Here's the boys' future room! Again, small, but bigger than the current set up with 3 in one room (which is going surprisingly well!).

Where are we now???  After an entire day with a concrete saw and sledge hammer.....

 Ta da!  Windows!

Here's a better shot of our very awesome window well!  Love it!  Brett added a terrace level in each window well, that we can use for plants.

 

 

Most of the basement is fairly level, but we had to use some self leveling concrete in one area that had a bit of a dip.  

Since we need to get rid of all the demo debris...we figured we'd go ahead and do the upstairs wall removal while we were at it...why not right?!?!  Who doesn't love living in a construction zone?  This was a cramped enclosed stairway.  We remove the wall to the right, which opens to the living room.  The unfinished area above the stairs was just a void... this house is too small to have wasted spaces!  Yeah, we really can't make use of the space for storage, but at least it will open the area up visually!

Well, now everything is torn up...now time to start putting it back together...the way we want it!  Planning post coming tomorrow!