Remodeling the Basement, Part I

Hello Friends!

This morning during Sesame Street I took a few photos to show you the progress we've been making in our basement.  If you remember, in 2012 we moved into our forever house.  It had been lovingly cared for and decorated by the same owner since it was built in 1979.  Powder blue shutters.  Pink carpeting.  Lots and lots of wallpaper.  We've had so much fun slowly updating things to suit our taste!

The good news is that this house had a finished basement.  Great for the kids' playroom and lots of open space to adjust to our needs (more on that soon!).  It even had a bathroom, which thrilled us!  Here's a photo from 2012 when we first toured the house:

What do I say?  It just wasn't our style.  But perhaps more important than style, to me, was the presence of some serious wall-to-wall carpeting.  And here's the thing:

You get what I'm saying?  :)

So my husband and I decided to try and remodel this bathroom all on our own.  We'd never done that before but we figured...it's a basement bathroom...so if we really wreck it, we can just avoid it until we can hire someone to bail us out!  Here's what we came up with:

I have to admit, I am thrilled with how it turned out!  We tore out the old wallpaper to discover some mold growing on the walls behind it, so we opted (after replacing the drywall) to just cover it back up.  That's some beadboard paneling from Lowes on the bottom of the walls, and some gorgeous toile wallpaper I found on deep discount from my local paint store (Miller Brothers if you're a Cincinnati local!) on the top.  My mom hung the wallpaper.  (Not ashamed to admit that was way beyond my capabilities!)

We found this beautiful little chest at the Burlington Antique Show in Kentucky.  Just needed a little shining up to be the perfect storage spot!  And those curtains?  They can barely be considered curtains.  Just some fabric that I found at WalMart of all places!  They have a simple hem around the edges and there's no way they would cover that window if you tried to close them, but they look cute!

I traced that little bee on the wall with a charcoal pencil years ago.  He (she??) fits in here!

The mirror above the sink was a $12 Craig's List find.  I think it was originally part of some kind of cabinet but it fits in here somehow!  There are hinges holding the two pieces together and my husband attached a brass chain to a hook on the wall to hang it.  He also wrangled that new/old pedestal sink (another Craig's List find!) into place and installed the Delta faucet.

While we're on the subject, I have to brag on my husband a bit more because he also laid down the new hexagonal tile floor!  All the trim and moldings were him too.  Come to think of it, what exactly did I do in this project?  Maybe my blog name should be Buzzings of a Queen Bee's Husband?

This little bathroom has become one of my favorite spaces in the house!  It feels clean and bright, and--perhaps better than anything--much more conducive to the uses of a six year old boy!