Basement Pictures - Family Room

Family Room

The gem of the basement is the Family Room.  This is where we watch movies, where the kids play, where art is done, and just our general media gathering spot.  Upstairs is non-TV space (though with laptops and Netflix, any and every space can be TV space), so the basement is where Loud happens.

Before, as Miciah's room / craft room:

When we first moved in, this was a woodworking room.  We cleaned layers and layers of sawdust from the walls (and the guy who did the woodworking died years before we bought the house!).  For quite a few years it was a grab bag sort of room.  We put a desk in in for a while.  It was a project-type of room where we stored lots of random stuff.  

Then we put a bed in it and pretended it was a bedroom.  For a few more years my uncle slept there during weekdays and all three kids were upstairs.  In a life-changing moment that ended up being really good timing, even though I was heartbroken about it, my uncle was let go and Miciah moved down to the basement to take over this space as her own.

I showed Miciah this picture when I was prepping for this post and she said, "Oh my gosh.  I used to live in that?!"  Yep.  I asked her if her new room was better and she gave me that teenage incredulous face and said, "Uh, yeah."  Which is kinda funny cause when we told the kids we were going to re-do the basement, and we told Miciah that she would have less space and very little storage, she was mad!  We didn't let it stop us, obviously, and we told her lots of times, "Just wait.  It'll be awesome.  Really."  

During tear-down:

During construction:

This picture is from the bottom of the stairs, looking into Miciah's doorway and the boys' doorway (behind the pole). And this is the other pink pole.  This one didn't have a place to go between walls or anything.  I kinda wanted to leave it as a pole, but they convinced me to cover it with a column.  I'm really happy with how that turned out.

This is looking into the room itself from the "hallway" portion of the room.  It's all one big open space, of course, but the layout lends itself to two separate sections: hallway and room.

Now, as the fully realized Family Room:

From the bottom of the stairs looking at Miciah's room (door on the left) and the boys' room (behind the pole).  Entrance to the laundry space is in the front left of the picture:

From the bottom of the stairs looking into the Family Room space.  Art table, covered in kid stuff, in the bottom right corner:

From Miciah's room looking into the Family Room space:

From the boys' room looking towards the stairs:

There are still a few things about the Family Room that I'm not in love with.  The couch will be replaced soon, for instance.  And I'm not in love with the game and toy storage that we have going on.  It's just old bins and the wardrobe from Miciah's old room.  Not ideal, but workable until I care to figure out a better solution.