Basement Redo Phase 1.....COMPLETE

This weekend was incredibly productive. The dumpster arrived on Friday like it was suppose to and on Saturday we got to work. It took three of us all afternoon (while my parents watched the kids) to clear the basement of most of its junk. There was so much that we had to finish up on Sunday. The dumpster is COMPLETELY full...I am amazed at how much junk was down there. It is very freeing to have all that stuff out of there. It should be said that not all this stuff was ours. In fact the majority wasn't. My Godfather graciously let us move into his parents house when we moved back (they were both in the nursing home then). When we moved in we filled 2-3 dumpsters getting rid of all the old flooring and broken furntiture and other things that weren't savable. But we never did the basement. Now we need the space so the basement
needed to be cleaned out. Most of the stuff we got rid of was rusty old tools, old tables and shelving, and some other general junk.

I am very excited of the prospect of having a large play area for the kids, a working pantry and storage for the kids toys (which we don't have now....all that stuff is everywhere), and storage for the seasonal stuff. It will be fantastic. Our home is very old and therefore does not have much storage space. We have 3, yes 3, closets in the entire house making it hard to find places for clothes and coats and the like. And we have have 3 cubbyspaces for storage in the upstairs but they are not very good for storing things you need to get at easily or often. Having this basement redo, I will gain my entry room back (it's filled with so much stuff you can barely get to the other side) and a place for the kids toys, and space for pantry items and the ability to buy in bulk and save some money. it will truly be a lifesaver for my house. Here's the pictures from Phase 1.

Seasonal Storage room before: this wall to the right was completely covered and the wall to the left. Now.......

It's completely empty

Pantry and toy storage room before: The entire length of the wall was piled high with stuff and these old shelves covered the wall. Now....

The room is empty, except for some quality metal shelving that was in there. We are buying new heavy duty plastic shelving to place in here.

The center of our basement....Enough Said

The other side that you couldn't see in the last picture because of all the junk

The Basement now!

The stuff we are keeping.

One INCREDIBLY FULL dumpster, all the way to the top


Just so you can see exactly how big this dumpster is that we filled.

Phase 2 is next weekend. We are going to paint the upper third of the walls (I'm sure you noticed the water proofing), the storage rooms, and the basement floor. Before we can do that, I need to clean off the walls and the floor this week.