Finishing our basement, oh & we painted the ceiling black…
Hi friends, so here it is, everything you could want to know about our basement remodel, as well as some details about our plans for the space!
If you haven’t seen our video detailing the basement renovation you can check it out here;
When remodeling an older or unique home, the designing process can be pretty overwhelming, especially when trying to honor the integrity and character of the home. Luckily for us, the basement was one of the easier projects to tackle, hence why it was one of our first! I say this because the basement was unfinished, cluttered, and had little character or charm that we needed to incorporate into our design plan. Ultimately, because of the basement’s current state, we could only make improvements!
To begin, we took out all of the shelving in the space, the previous owner was a big crocheting enthusiast, so the excessive shelving was built for all of her heaps of yarn! There were such a wide variety of shelving, built in shelves, stand alone shelves, shelves built into the ceiling, even shelves built in under the stairs (we actually ended up keeping these and turning the space into a great storage closet)!
Once we got all of the shelving out of the basement, the space really opened up! Then we could decide where the lighting would go! We thought about how we would use the space and the flow of the space and decided the best lighting format from there. For example, we knew that we were going to hang a TV on the wall next to the French doors, so we made sure that the can light wouldn’t be too close to the TV, to avoid any glare from the light. The type of lights we used were dimmable can lights, pretty basic because we wanted to keep the ceilings as flush and as high as the space would allow.
This brings me to share about our ceiling! Our black ceiling! Okay, so this one of the most unique decisions we made in the space, and boy did it pay off! Instead of adding a standard drop ceiling to the basement, we opted to take a more unique approach and paint the current exposed ceiling black. We did this for a couple of reasons;
1. We wanted to keep our ceilings as high as possible. We were fortunate enough to have pretty high ceilings in the space, especially for it being a basement. We wanted the space to feel like a continuation of the rest of the home, not an afterthought of an add on. We were fortunate enough that the basement already had beautiful walk out French doors, so we figured by keeping the ceiling clearance high the space would feel more open and less den-ish.
2. We liked the modern look. At the end of the day the cottage is a cottage, and that’s how we want to keep it, but adding moments of juxtaposition with some modern touches really helps balance out the space and brings it to the current century. So keeping the ceiling exposed was the perfect industrial touch for the space, especially because it served a purpose!
3. We had nothing to loose! Ultimately, if we didn’t like how it turned out the fix was simple, cover it up with sheetrock and go the typical ceiling route. Going into the project this was our backup plan, and I have to say taking design risks are a whole lot easier when you have a simple and not so costly backup plan.
Last update I will share is our new floors! We picked a laminate plank flooring that is water resistant (which is critical since it is a basement) and has a reputation for its durability. The exact flooring we chose was called Fresh Oak by Lifeproof, and I picked it for its lighter look, with the objective to make sure that we are reflecting as much of the light from the French doors as possible, not absorbing it since it is the only source of natural light in the basement!
All in all, we are extremely happy with the results of our basement remodel and even more excited to decorate the room with pieces that embrace and balance out the new exposed ceiling! You might be wondering what we are going to use the space for, and you might not be surprised to hear that with a small home like ours, “dual functionality” is the name of the game! To fit our current needs, the basement space will serve as a family/tv room for movie nights and gaming, a workout room, and a guest area, with a small desk for extra office space. It will be a challenge to get the right flow and furniture to fit the broad set of needs from the space, but its a challenge I am looking forward to tackling! Be sure to be on the lookout for an updated blog post on our basement and the interior design process, you can subscribe to our newsletter to make sure you do not miss it!
So, I hope you enjoyed hearing a little bit more about our basement remodel and our decisions to paint our ceilings black! If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask them, but in the meantime here are some tips I walked away from this project with!
Project Tips
1- Discuss your vision with a professional! We went into the project thinking that a paint spray gun would be the best approach, but our painter advised us to go at it with a standard brush becuase of the state of our ceiling and all of its variability.
2- Keep the big picture in mind. When we were picking out a darker paint color for the ceiling, we made sure to keep it in mind when we picked out the wall color and the flooring.
3- Don’t be afraid to take a little risk - especially when the risk is pretty low. Like I said, if we needed to fall back on plan B, it would not have been too costly to do so.
Thanks again for reading, see you next time!
x, Alexandria
