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Monday, October 10, 2011

Putting the “Retro” in Retro Ranch Reno

There are certain parts of our house that you have yet to lay eyes on.  The garage and basement have been off the radar thus far, and there is good reason for that.  1)  They are both so horribly lit that I figured pictures might not even show well, and 2)  Our renovation budget is not even close to being big enough to tackle the main floor and the basement.

All that being said, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to give you a little sneak peak of our basement for now; especially since there will be a handful of changes that are going to take place down there, even though we aren’t technically renovating that area. 

Changes:
- new washer and dryer (all appliances in the house are being replaced with energy-efficient models)
- windows and doors will be replaced (again, yay for energy-efficiency)
- parts of the ceiling (which is currently wood…don’t ask why) will be torn down to access HVAC/plumbing/electric
- part of the floor will be jack-hammered up so that a new, stronger, steel support post can go in (the load from the main floor is quadrupled on that post after we put the beams into the ceiling)

Past all of that, we haven’t thought much about basement changes except that we HAVE to paint that wood paneling, install more lighting, create a better laundry area, put in an attractive (if that is even possible) drop ceiling for easy access to things, also raise up the ceiling to create more head room…we noticed there is some dead space where it could go up higher, anddddd okay...maybe we have started to think about the basement more than we would like to admit. 

Let’s face it…I hate the basement.  I don’t want to spend more time down there than it takes to walk up the steps to the main floor, or to throw a load of laundry in.  Regardless of that, since we haven’t hit the lottery and we haven’t figured out how to grow money on trees, we will have to put “project beautify the basement” on the back burner….for many, many years.  I’m just hoping it’s somewhat decent by the time we have kids.  I really want them to have a great play space. And I will admit, the one thing our basement has is space. 

So here we go!  Beware, you are about to travel back in time.  (And of course, my typical apology…I’m sorry, the lighting REALLY stinks in these photos!)

View from in front of the door to the garage, up the basement stairs to the main level.

View from in front of the garage door, looking to the left, laundry area in front of you (not sure what purpose that weird dividing screen serves.

View from in front of the garage door, looking to the right, large closet wall shown on the right.

Horrible laundry area, with absolutely NO lighting.

View into the large closet that was shown above to the right of the garage entry door.

Side of the closet.

Other side of the closet.
View from right outside the door of the large closet (the hubs turned a light off on me so it's super dark..sorry!)

Small alcove in the basement that was shown in the picture above.


View of the basement from the laundry area.

View of workshop area/storage room in the utility area.

View of utility area.


View of the basement from the utility area.

Weird framed map they left hanging on the wall.

View from the back corner of the basement.  Post all the way to the left is the one that needs to be changed out for a stronger post.

Part of ceiling that was opened up to accommodate the new duct work.

1 comment:

  1. Your wood paneling is an exact match of what we ripped out this weekend. Some remains in the kitchen and stairwell..I feel your pain. Our beautify the basement project was on hold until Irene showed up :-P

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