Rec Room Before & After

Hello everyone, today I thought I should share the other half of the rec room with you guys. And since I've shared every other part of the basement, it's about time.  I shared the built-in's with you guys here, which was one side of the rec room.

Like I mentioned before, this renovation was fueled by the need to have an animal free zone for Braxton, which would also be baby proofed so that we would have some peace of mind. So most of the updates that we made had this as our number one goal. Before I get too ahead of myself though, here are a few before pictures (sorry for the bad quality, they were taken almost five years ago):

I know, I know, it wasn't horrible looking. It did function okay for two people, but it had it's problems. The floor was always freezing, as was the rest of the room. And there was absolutely no storage or room for anything. With the addition of a child comes toys, and lots of them. Thinking about how cluttered our basement was about to get gave me hives.

Most of the renovation was covered, but I will give you a quick recap (excluding the built-in's) with some pictures to break up the word heavy post: 

1. Ripped the flooring, wood paneling and trim up. Here is a picture standing in our rec room facing our laundry room:

There was no insulation in this wall prior to this, so you could hear everything going on in the laundry room. Washer, dryer, furnace kicking on, air conditioner and even the cats using the potty. Not the ideal situation, so insulation in this wall was life altering.

A cool find when we did rip out the wood paneling was a huge open area in the upper part of the wall above the entrance to Braxton's playroom (old crawlspace entrance). Here is a quick picture to show you what I mean, I highlighted it with the blue rectangle:

We decided to use this wasted space and included it when we insulated and installed the drywall. It ended up being a 2x4 foot cubby once the drywall was finished. We then painted it the same colour as the walls. I has become a great place to store extra blankets and pillows.

2. Insulated all the walls, building out the main wall for the built-in's. Dry walled three of the four walls. We choose  NYPD by Behr, which is a great colour for a basement that gets a good amount of natural light:

Here is a better picture of the cubby during the painting process, you can see it before it was trimmed out or painted:

 
4. Next we had carpet installed by local company. We love this carpet! I cannot express how much we love it! Actually, within one week of having this carpet, Braxton started to crawl. Within the month he was walking.

5. Once the carpet was installed, it was finally time to trim around the room. This was a long process, as it took forever to get the touch ups done. This room became the hub of the house, so every time we worked on the trim we had to pull every thing into the middle of the room. Then pull it all back before we could bring Braxton back down. So motivation became a problem, but we pushed through and got it done. 

After reading all of this, you guys deserve some after pictures! Well, I can manage that:

It's hard to write a post and talk about what we did after the fact. It would have been much easier to blog through it, but thanks for being patient while I shared this with you. I promise this is the last time I will talk about something long after it's been finished.

In case you wondering, the prints are from a shop on etsy called Coco Milla.  There are tons of great prints on the shop, we actually got a few for Braxton's playroom. Hopefully I will be able to share that room soon!

Kerby

Linking to:
Kathe with an E - You're Gonna Love It Tuesday 1/12/15 
Thrifty Decor Chick - January Before & After 
A Handful of Everything - Great Idea Thursdays #81