Finishing my basement without drywall and a lot of expense.
Since I moved into my condo in April I've been hiding a secret. My basement. It's a complete disaster with boxes all over the floor, some empty, some full, some half full. One day last spring I went downstairs to tackle the mess and I had good intentions but it was overwhelming and all I ended up doing was separating the boxes into categories and leaving them in piles on the floor. About two months ago it hit a brand new low and getting to the back to find my painting supplies was almost impossible. Yet the mess stayed.
Finally, Kevin and I finished installing the hardwood floors and since the weather outside was about twenty below without windchill we decided to saw the floors inside in the basement. This was great for the floors but horrible for the messy, opened boxes in the basement. A fine layer of sawdust coated everything and a huge pile of dust and chunks lay in the little aisle I had to walk between boxes.
The day after the floors were finished I decided the basement needed attention. I purchased 6 huge, rugged storage shelves and used them as walls in the basement to map out a couple of rooms. There is one small utility room and one large game room and the laundry. Then came the hard part of sorting the boxes, dusting them, and placing them on the shelves. Some day I'll go through every box to weed out the necessities but for now they're all off the floor and tucked away.
Then, I bought some huge panel curtains that I will attach to the rafters in front of the shelves. These will be my walls. If I need to get to a box I can just pull the curtains aside. Right now the curtains are plain off-white but in the future I think I may paint them to add a little spice to the room.
There was leftover hardwood (HUGE problem with the floors) and enough that I can finish off the floor in my laundry room. I saved the carpet from my upstairs office and this is going to be cut to fit the game room. And I'm considering painting the floor in the rest of the basement.
The walls that are still concrete will be getting a coat of primer and then paint. In the game room I'm going to put chalkboard paint on the wall and then hang game boards from some games I have and I'll pick up a few more at the local GoodWill store so the walls look very fun. The laundry walls will be painted either white or another clean pastel color to brighten this dark area.
I've purchased some additional lights since the original basement lighting was only two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. And with a little more elbow grease, voila! I will have a finished basement that is still basically "unfinished". It was inexpensive and it's really starting to look good!
