The Basement

When we first looked at our home, we were thrilled with the amount of usable space in our basement.  It's uncommon in a neighbourhood like ours to have a high ceiling or large windows on the lower level.  But our house does.  It has also been renovated - sometime in the eighties, but renovated nonetheless.

The basement houses a family room, the laundry area,  Jay's little office nook and lots of storage. Great usable space, right?

There's a couple of problems though.  First off, it's being used as a total dumping ground.  I'm talking leftover supplies from projects, laundry piles, sports equipment, boxes of questionable contents, extra furniture more sports equipment... you get the idea.

 I want to make the space function well for our family.  I want the family room down there to be somewhere I might actually watch a movie and the laundry room to be a place I don't cringe when I have to throw in a load.  However, I don't want to spend much money on re-designing the space right now.

The first step will be to remove the strange kidney-shaped counter.  That's free and I can do it myself.

As far as the storage area at the bottom of the stairs goes, we need to store the following sports items:

•  hockey equipment & tree for hanging it to dry
• goalie pads for road hockey
• skis (three pair, plus boots)
• snowboards (two boards plus boots)
• soccer gear (including balls and equipment bags)
• lifejackets
• baseball gloves
• assorted balls & outdoor gear

Additionally, there needs to be a place for the kids to hang up their winter gear.  It all needs to fit into the area at the bottom of the stairs (see below).

 I'd like to create two lockers, like these, which Jay made for a client:

These lockers will be where the kids can put their winter clothes and boots.  

We also need some closed storage for the sports gear.

This one's my all time fave.  I love the cupboard and hook combo.

 via

Today, I've been focused on clearing out the junk and re-organizing the rest. I took some photos of the before mess.   I used my blackberry so you wouldn't be able to see the mess very clearly. I'll show you those tomorrow, along with the progress I've made so far.

xo Meg