Indian Springs Makeover - Basement

This home in Indian Springs, AL was built in 1995 by the original owners of the property, Tom Owen and his wife. Being built in the 90's, this home had those soffit boxes in the bathrooms over the vanities & tub and an incredible amount of recessed lighting! I'm happy not to have had to replace all of those. I did add a few chandeliers to give a few of the rooms a little more personality, plus picking out light fixtures is one of my favorite parts of this process. A couple of good things about this 90's home renovation... no wallpaper or popcorn ceilings to deal with!!

This blog post is about the basement renovation! This basement is large with 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths (formerly), a den, and a full kitchen! I ended up with 2 bedrooms, an office, full bath and a mudroom plus the den and full kitchen. As you can see from the photos below, the entire basement flooring was either carpet or 12x12 tile. Both types of flooring had been worn, stained, and cracked so it was time to replace them. I decided to go with one type of flooring for a more seamless look which had to work in both the bathroom and bedrooms. I felt that tile was too cold for a basement so I decided on luxury vinyl tile (LVT). I went with the 4mm Stainmaster brand in the washed oak umber finish. I found it at Lowe's and got a discount for buying in bulk so it ended up being about $2/sf for materials. I hired a friend to help with the install and we were able to complete the project in about a week. I could not have been more pleased with outcome!

Every inch of the interior walls of this brightly-colored basement got a fresh coat of paint from my painter, Jose Silva, and his crew. We chose a combination of Benjamin Moore Ballet White (walls) and Soft Chamois (trim) for the basement (and the rest of this home). The basement ceiling was the most difficult part of this basement project! I am not a fan of drop down ceilings so I was determined to come up with a different ceiling solution for our basement. I thought about sheet rocking the ceiling, but wanted to keep the additional height and easy access to plumbing and electrical after removing the ceiling tiles. Plus, I am a fan of the more industrial look. The additional labor came in removing all the insulation that was between the floor joists and behind the ceiling tiles. Don't get me started on all the crazy electrical we had to sort through. I still am not sure of where half those wires go to. Another issue was adding sheetrock to the top of the existing walls so that it added the extra 1.5 foot of height to the room. We added a 1x4" trim around all the rooms where the ceiling tile had started and sheet rocked above that to the top. To avoid looking too commercial, I decided to paint the exposed ceiling (floor joists) a shade of white instead of the black you typically see with exposed ceilings. I went with the same color as the trim and new sheetrock for this. All the old canned lights were replaced with new ones and attached between the floor joists where needed with the exception of the 2 guest bedrooms. I decided on chandeliers for those rooms. The 3rd bedroom became my office;)

For the basement den/study area, I decided that the red brick stood out too much from all the white so I added a mortar wash to it. This brick area used to house a wood burning stove. We hope to add a pellet stove before next winter to this space to increase the efficiency and lower energy costs.

We kept the original cabinetry in the basement kitchen, but painted them and added new hardware. I replaced the old laminate countertops with granite countertops (Branco Dallas from Alabama Kitchen and Bath).

Below are a few of the before and after photos of this basement renovation. See more about this renovation on my Instagram account @barkleyproperties under #sobelstakeindiansprings.

The den/study, before and after. The brick area is the future home of our pellet stove.

Full bath to mudroom. We plan to add a mudroom bench and shelving to the right. The door on the other side of this room was added to connect the kitchen area to the bedroom area for a quick short cut, plus the stairs to the main house is on the other side of the left wall so the location for the mudroom is idea. The kitchen is to the right and has an exterior door to the pasture.