My new favorite room

Happy Friday and how the heck are ya? I’m ready for a weekend of NOTHING because I’ve been working my tail off on the basement for the past week. Lots of good stuff has been happening that I can’t wait to show you!!

But I had to share the best first. It’s a little ridiculous how excited I am about this part of the basement. I’d be more than a little embarrassed if you had seen the happy dances I’ve been doing in this room over the past couple of weeks. ;)

But there have been many happy dances.

Welcome to my little piece of heaven…the storage room:

Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL? No? Well, I think it is. ;)

I wanted to share it now, before drywall, so you can see the whole thing. (I know you would be sad if you couldn't.)

That pic above is taken standing in our future laundry room. (I know many of you are curious about our reasoning on that, so that’s an upcoming post.) I am full of absolute JOY at the thought of a dedicated laundry room, but let’s talk storage for now.

This part of the basement was framed in last week, and we did this first so we could decide how to make the laundry room work. I’m finding I’m SO GLAD we are dragging this process out a bit…doing one step at a time has allowed us to figure out exactly where we want to put each wall, each outlet, each light. I’ve changed my mind where one wall was supposed to go three times, and the final result is perfect.

If we had done it all at once I am pretty positive I would have wished we had done something different. Because we’re taking it slow we get to live with it for a bit along the way and figure out exactly how we want things.

Anyhoo, her she is, the beauty, my “store”:

This room houses our drain and sump pump, so it will stay unfinished. There won’t be any drywall on the interior, no flooring, no finished ceiling.

But I think it’s beautiful. ;)

They weren’t even going to frame out the back wall, but I know I wanted to hang shelves everywhere, so I asked them to do that as well.

I wanted to maximize every bit I could, so I made a small bench that I put over the sump (tall enough to clear the pipes) and piled a few bins on top:

These are the only bins that don’t fit in the under the stairs storage. I am delirious. :)

I made the bench with scrap wood from the garage and extra butcher block from our kitchen island. (And all I gotta say to Stink Eye Sis is nannynannybooboo, told you I’d use all that scrap wood! Booyah!)

I got the wood at Lowe’s and cut it down, then hung the shelves with simple, cheap brackets:

I went as high as I could, knowing there wouldn’t be a ceiling going in. The tall stuff goes up there in between the rafters. Beams? I have no idea what they are:

And I had room to store all of my paint along the bottom:

Why does this make me so happy??? It does.

I used to tie back all of our drapes, so I have a ton of hardware left that I used. Years ago I came up with a way to use it for organizational purposes:

I hang them high and then put long, hard to store stuff across. Like curtain rods, cord hiders…whatever.

I’ve had this pretty pair for about ten years:

I got them on clearance at Pottery Barn, and have kept them all these years cause I think they are beautiful and I want to figure out a way to use them. For now, they hold more long stuff. ;)

Remember my craft area down here?

I’ve purged and reorganized SO MUCH. Most of the items on the shelf to the right are still in the basement, just in another spot. The next shelf was tools and all of those went up to the garage last year. The rest? PURGED. It used to take four sets of shelves (plus a small table for paint supplies) to hold everything.

Now it’s all in this six by seven foot space, neatly organized:

(Plus TONS of other stuff that was elsewhere!)

What’s even more awesome is that about a third of this will go up in the dining room when it gets the big transformation this year.

So there will be more space on the shelves so I can buy more stuff keep it really organized. ;)

Our house has always had plenty of storage space (hello, unfinished basement!), but it’s never had a storage room – a room with a door and walls that I can close off and not have to look at. THIS is what makes me giddy!

And seriously, if I’m this excited about a totally unfinished room, the basement is only going to get better from here, right? :)

This weekend I hope to get an actual pretty project completed. It won’t be as awesome as this (what else would be?), but pretty. (I hope!)

Hope you have a great one!!