Basement reveal… finally!

e finished our basement reno back in May (has it been that long already??) and I've been meaning to blog about the process every day, but midway through the process I got busy with life and now it's the end of November…
We are still not done with decorating, but I would like to share with you what our basement is looking like now. As soon as I make additional changes I will update later on. Warning: this post is photo heavy.

This is the doorway into our basement.

I decided to add a gallery wall going down to the basement with family photos
and my travel photos. I got the frames from Ikea. The frames are RIBBA frames and they
were around $20/each. I got the photos printed at Costco at 12" x 12". 

View from down in the basement.

This is the view going down to the basement. I have one 3-year old and a 4-month
old so that is why we wanted to finish our basement. We really wanted a play area
for the kids. However, we wanted to section parts of the basement for our
entertainment area, an office for my husband and a spare bedroom.

You can see we used a sectional to divide the entertainment space from the kids'
play area.

And this is another view of the other side of the basement.

Another angle.

We got our contractor to build us a built-in shelving unit so that I could display
some knick knacks.

I love displaying things around my house. You can say it's a passion of mine.

A close-up of the shelves.

I love my owls. They are from West Elm. The yellow lacquered box is also from
West Elm and I have pretty shells sitting on top of it that I brought back from the beaches
of Cuba.

Here's my washroom. Excuse the step stool and the red toilet seat. It's for my
preschooler ;-)

My bathroom vanity. You can see me in the reflection!

I love my bathroom shower. We chose subway tiles and the contractor put in sliding
glass doors.

My contractor also put in a built-in nook to put our shampoos/conditioner.

We have a huge shower head. It's hard to capture in this photo, but I absolutely love it.

I want to put frames up in the bathroom later on. 

And here is our spare bedroom. My in-laws stayed in here while they were visiting.
We couldn't afford a headboard so that'll come later on (I think).

Here's the spare bedroom closet. It had double doors as you can see and it's a pretty
decent size.

I plan on putting a console table along that wall with a round mirror above it.
I've been eyeing some pieces at Chatelet Home. They refurbish vintage furnitures and
many of their stock are French-inspired.

Another look.

There's a little window in the room so it does get some light during the day.

Looking into our entertainment area. The French doors lead into the office.
You can see how bright our basement is because we have a lot of pot lights.

I try to keep this area free of any toys.

On the other side of the built-in shelves, the contractor put a shelf area for us to, again,
display stuff. Initially he was going to put the dry wall all the way up, but we asked
him to do it only half-way. The pipes that controls the water temperature in the house
is under the shelf area.

I made my own terrariums and I bought the sand-blasted manzanita branch at
Home Sense (a discount home goods store here in Canada) for $39.99.
I have seen these exact ones at flower shops for over $150!

Close-up of my terrariums.
I bought the vase at Home Sense for like $5 and I used fake succulents and my
mini mushrooms that I had lying around. The black sand was purchased at
Michaels. I saw a terrarium that was already made at a home goods store for $200.
I took a picture of it and made something similar for a fraction of that price.

Here's my other one. I used green mushrooms instead.

Close-up of my manzanita branch.

Besides the leather sectional and the white, rectangular pillow everything here was
relatively cheap. The rug, one-seater, pillows were purchased from Home Sense and
the side table, shelf, frames were purchased from Ikea. We wanted to invest in a good
leather sofa so that's where most of the budget went for the furniture.

I love collecting pretty things because you never know when you need to display
pretty things around your house. 

Close-up of the shelves.

I always save pretty boxes because they make great display pieces.

My fake orchid from Ikea.
I love me some real flowers, but I wanted something that would last forever…
I have real flowers in other parts of the house.

My dog, Rosco, wanted to make a cameo :-)

The back of this white chair has tufting, but you can't see it with this pillow over it. I wish
the pillow was more of a rectangular shape so that we can see the detail on the
chair, but oh well…

View of the other side of the basement. That's where the bathroom and spare
bedroom is. We wanted the bathroom close to the bedroom so that it would be
convenient for our guest.

Our new flat screen TV. It's a Samsung Smart TV.

Here is my husband's office. It's still pretty bare. He needs a new laptop and some
desk accessories.

I put a gallery wall up in his office.

My father-in-law painted the stork painting. It's personally not my style (a little too old-
school for me) so I hung a gallery wall incorporating other pictures, illustrations and
even a little mirror to bring the focus off that one painting.

My daughter and son (dressed up as a dragon for Halloween).

I get a lot of illustrator's prints from work so I saved a few and brought them home
to hang.

My husband's office has a ladder to display all his soccer trophies. I wanted to spray
paint them all a glossy, navy blue so that they would look cohesive together,
but he wouldn't let me. I think the gold looks so tacky…

His office has the fuse box and the contractor hid it nicely with cabinet doors.

Here it is closed.

His office also has a doorway leading into our cold room. Initially we weren't planning
on finishing it, but then we changed our mind. We got the contractor to extend the
flooring and put up dry wall so that we could use it as a storage room.

We have our golf clubs and tools in here.

We also got a chest freezer as our refrigerator freezer is tiny!
I also store some of my son's old clothes in here as well as his old toys. I'm saving
the clothes for my sisters just in case they have a boy.

I forgot to show you the stairway leading up to the main floor.
The door to the left leads into our furnace room and the door the right leads into an
extra storage room.

Here is the extra storage room. We also got this finished. The back extends further
onto the left so it's actually a big space. We store our Christmas decorations and some
non-perishable foods in here.

And this is our furnace room. We didn't finish this room as there's no need for it to be
finished. We store our vacuum and sports gears in here as well as cleaning supplies.

Here's our snowboards. I miss snowboarding! Once my daughter is a little older I plan
on hitting the slopes.