Basement Bathroom

“Remodelation” on a new bathroom in our basement has begun! We currently have 4 children living in our basement and 7 children sharing one bathroom in our home. Late at night it can feel like quite the trek to get to a bathroom in the middle of the night, so we thought it would be nice to add a bathroom to our basement, for the children’s sake, you know.
We had several church members happily volunteer to help with demolition of all kinds of things in our basement. We needed the ground jack-hammered and walls taken down.
We ladies made sure to stay hydrated, so we could take care of the children and have a little supper ready for the men when they finished all of their hard work.
They dug into the concrete leaving a huge mess of dirt and concrete chunks which needed to be disposed of somewhere.
That somewhere ended up being in buckets which were then carried up the stairs and out to our dumpster. Thankfully everyone pitched in, so it made for less trips up the stairs, but man was it all super heavy.It’s beginning to look a lot like a sump pump hole!
We could not be any happier with what was accomplished in one day. Demo went really well and we are on our way to a new bathroom.

Windows

Moving into a home built in the 70’s we knew that we’d need to do a little updating. For instance, did you know that the tiny little basement windows are no longer up to code?
With all of the plans we have for this house we knew that the first thing an inspector would look at would be these windows, so while I had big plans for a new bathroom in the basement egress windows were the priority.A big reason for having to change out the windows was because four of our children actually live in the basement. Can you imagine trying to crawl out that tiny little window? My children are small and thin, but still. Yikes!
I can’t believe how much more light comes in when you cut out part of the wall.
Windows are in and finished. We are just needing to do a little touching up around the windows, you know, like painting and cleaning up. I’m sure that will happen in due time. We’ve since moved on to bigger and better things.

Ready for Guests...

Come and visit!

Paint and carpet are installed. You can check out older photos from the start of this project here and here.

Yes, I know I need new bedding. That's going to have to wait though.

Not only did we finish the basement, but we also redid the baby girls' room. Elizabeth and this no named girl will be sharing a room. It's very girly. Stay tuned for those photos in another post.

Framing and Rocking

We're getting closer to getting this project done! David is standing in the storage room next to the bedroom closet which is about to be framed.

Here is a view of our outrageously messy basement. The storage area now has its own entrance whereas before the only entrance was to go through the bedroom. Oh and there is the guest bed leaning up against the wall and Barbie's carriage on the train table. It all goes so well together. How nice!

This is a view into the new storage room. It really doesn't look that big in the photo. Just imagine shelving lining the whole closet. Big, deep shelves on both sides. I can't wait!

The closet is framed and as Jared says, "rocked!"

Basement

When we moved into this house we talked about, someday, redoing the basement. It's got an odd layout, however it wasn't urgent, so we left it alone. Then this storm happened. Little did we know that our sump pump had stopped working. I went downstairs that evening to get a sewing pattern and things were wet. I thought the kids were playing with water downstairs again. They have like to play restaurant and have tea parties. Then I realized that there was no way they would dump that much water on the floor. I decided to check the storage room where our sump pump was located. The storage room was okay. It was the bedroom- the carpet was soaking wet. Thus, begins our remodeling project in the basement.

There's the sump pump right behind Jared. He ripped down the wall that lead to part of the storage area. There was a door from the bedroom that led into this storage room. Lucky for us it was bulk garbage day in our neighborhood where the garbage collectors pick up big items. We decided to take the carpet out and stick it on the curb!

There was a double wide door here. Gone now! See that carpet? That was the odd area that didn't make sense to us. It was like a random little cove.

Jared is prepping for door installation. We moved the door here.

There used to be a wall across here. See the stud? You can still see the wall in the previous photo.

The door was moved here. We moved the bedroom so now there will be windows in it and a closet will be built. That will leave room for a larger storage area full of shelves. I love shelves!!