So over the last few weeks we have been changing up our basement and planning out the rest of it. This includes the bathroom laundry and the extra bedroom/office (not sure what we are going to call it) In the meantime we did some finalizing of the big room in the basement, and it has come- along pretty far.

After getting all of the sheetrock up and the mess of a sewer line project we did the week before; we were now able to move things out of this room for hopefully the last time. These Items were the little tidbits of supplies we have left for the remaining rooms in the basement and some odds and ends in which we don’t know where to put them. The Room was cleared, swept about 4 times and touched up some with paint. We took one of our 3 free rolls of carpet and dusted it off and laid it out on the floor.  The one nice thing about carpet is that it has the seams in it on the bottom so when you take a sharp knife you can actually cut your carpet pretty square.  Two things one must not forget, 1) always cut over a board 2) you can always cut carpet smaller, but never bigger…

Most times when you lay carpet it has padding underneath for softness; and tack strips on the edges that hold it when it is stretched and placed. In a basement, usually these things aren’t necessary.  I guess padding is up to you, but most basements that have any chance of moisture don’t have these as a precaution so that’s one less cost lost if you get any water down there.  As well as if padding gets wet, it smells moldy and soggy and can be more trouble than it is worth.

The way I have done it in the past, is you can hold the carpet down in a couple of ways, they make a carpet tape…that you put on the backside and stick it to the floor. Or you can just use duct tape and make it a giant loop to make it sticky on both sides, and then just stick it down. This is useful if you are forced to use two pieces of carpet because the one piece is not large enough.

The way that we chose to hold it down was we went and bought ¾” primed baseboard, painted it white then just placed it on top of the carpet and pushed down just a little to put pressure on the edges then nailed it to the wall.  We could have measured from the ceiling down and that it be the same height around the room, but if your basement is like ours.. it all slopes so there is no point in trying too hard for us, we just placed and nailed it.

The other part of this room that I enjoyed doing was what I called “the media closet” This is where I made a place in our closet in that room for the DVD player, My Xbox and My DVR… and then I have the TV on the wall in the middle of the room with no boxes and wire floating all over it… makes for a cleaner look. But that did mean I had to cough up a bit for some 25’ RCA and VGA cable… but worth it in the end.

The other bits of the basement have come together; we gutted the wall between the laundry room and frames all of it in after dry-locking the wall. I had to build the framing in 4-6 foot sections, since I was unable to transport a full 9’6” wall through the basement and into the bathroom. All of this while working around a vanity which has nowhere else to go. At the end of the day though we had that all framed up and ready for plumbing-electrical and insulation and drywall…

We are kind of at a pick and choose point of our project, picking the things we want to do and ignoring the things we don’t….. I really don’t suggest this method because now it seems we have 3 unfinished projects.. ugh.