Basement Work - Part 3
Matt and I were very busy this weekend doing more planning and actual work in the basement this weekend. We started things out on Saturday by taking all our outdoor brush to the city dump site since that was the only day we could do that. We're not allowed to burn anything within city limits, so we have to take brush and leaves down to the dump site. Inconvenient I know, don't get me started.
So then we drove down to Ankeny to check out Home Depot and Menards for some more options for paint, flooring, toilets, and supplies. We were more looking for flooring options since our Lowes in Ames seemed to be very short of vinyl flooring the last time we were there. We decided that we should work on painting and wallpaper removal for the weekend since that could be done easily before the carpet installation happens next week.
So here's what we did on Sunday to the laundry room.
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| From Basement Renovation Project |
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| From Basement Renovation Project |
Yes it is very purple. I was trying to go for a grayish-purple shade but it kind of came out more purple. But we both like it - it really makes the white cabinets pop and it has a sheen to it. Whereas the old yellow paint (ick) was flat so it washed everything out. I can't wait to get our cabinets installed. Here's what I had in mind:
They are from IKEA and are sold as kitchen cabinets. However I think they will fit our needs well, plus they are relatively inexpensive. We probably won't be able to pick them up until after Thanksgiving, since the nearest IKEA store is in Minneapolis.
We had a lot of discussions regarding flooring for the bathroom and laundry room. If you recall we weren't planning on redoing the laundry room right away, but since they had to rip out the middle of the floor for more tiling we have to do it now. So now we will replace both rooms' floors with vinyl flooring. At first we had huge sticker shock at Home Depot. They wanted almost $3.00 per square foot for glueless vinyl flooring from Armstrong. That would be about $400 for flooring - which would really strain our budget. So we pressed on to Menards and found the same type of flooring (different brand) for about $1.20 per square foot. On our way back we realized we forgot some stuff that we needed at Home Depot, so we stopped at Lowes in Ames. Turns out they had more Armstrong flooring (the exact same thing they had at Home Depot) for about $1.00 - $1.30 per square foot. So here's some flooring that we're considering:
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| From Basement Renovation Project |
The two on the left are the samples we got from Lowe's. I'm leaning more towards the sample in the upper left since it is darker. I would prefer a darker color since it will hide the dirt better. The glueless type of flooring is really nice because it is thicker than typical vinyl flooring. It has kind of a foam backing, so its really comfortable to stand on. Plus you don't have to worry about the gluing the whole thing, just glue where large appliances will be and near doors, then cut and place.
When we got back on Saturday we started prepping Matt's office. This was the only room in the house with wallpaper. The wallpaper had started pulling off the wall, no doubt due to the high humidity of the water seepage earlier this year. Matt didn't like it anyway, so we purchased some wallpaper adhesive remover and took it off. Only problem is that it ripped some of the backing so I got to spend all day yesterday patching and sanding it. I really hate wallpaper with a passion now.
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| From Basement Renovation Project |
It was still a little damp from patching, so we weren't able to prime it. Since the walls aren't textured we got some wall texture in a can to spray the walls with.
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| From Basement Renovation Project |
So sometime this week we hope to prime the walls, spray the texture, prime again and then finally paint with Matt's choice of color. I'm sure it will be a big shock to most of you :D
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| From Basement Renovation Project |
So that will keep us busy this week. Next weekend we plan on installing the flooring, the toilet in the bathroom, some heating duct work into the office and living room, and pulling ethernet and speaker cable. Should be a fun week I'm sure.