Salem House Before and Afters- easy on the budget basement spruce-up!

 So, this is a blog that reaches into the recent past. Two years ago we purchased a small house near campus for our Eldest and her housemates. I christened the house "Salem House" both because of it's address, and because I hoped to make it a place of peace. "Salem", being from the word,"Shalom" or "Salaam", meaning "Peace".
I chose the house because of location, but it also fulfilled another desire- two bathrooms! It is a neighborhood of nearly identical houses, having been built in the Sears House boom of the last century. The houses are quaint and built with a single main floor bath. Salem had two. Someone had added a bathroom, a full bathroom, and it was pretty decent. (Unlike another house I looked at in the neighborhood that advertised two bathrooms, but one was a toilet and shower on a platform, just open in the basement. Ick.)
The drawback of this second bathroom is it is located in the back of the basement, down the stairs, through a little room, through the laundry room, past the utility area of the furnace and water heater and then the bathroom. It was dreary, dark, ugly and thoroughly uninviting.

Before

 The basement featured gray paint, (unlike the upstairs which was all the "fleach" color see previous Salem blogs) the gray of battleships and bargain bins. The floor was alternately the red of dried blood, and indoor/outdoor carpet of the same tone. The walls had paneling popular in the 1970s, and the ceiling was partly dry-walled and partly open. Some of the dry-walled areas were open where holes had been cut.

After

 My solution needed to be economical and cheery. So.... paint! LOTS of white.
I opened up the back of the stairs to allow light to come through, painstakingly scraped off the black gum of the rug backing, and then painted many coats. I gave the bright white stairs a colorful grape-colored painted "runner."

Before

I covered the dark red floor with a super-saturated purple/blue. I wanted a color that would cover the red, but also make a sharp contrast and statement in the small space.
The ceiling was a "stumper." It was unpainted dry wall, with several holes cut or punched through. It was dirty..but it was a ceiling. I wanted to use it, without having to replace the dry wall, so I came up with a solution by patching the dry wall where it was ruined with thin plyboard, then "coffering" the ceiling to keep my patches from standing out. Of course, the ceiling is low, so my coffering needed to be both inexpensive and shallow. 

After

 I painted the ceiling a soft celadon green and painted the "pine" paneling white, gave the top and bottom of the walls some trim and added some bits and pieces of furniture and art. The cool framed gold figures are actual rubbings from Italy farmed from my Mom's friend's garage sale.

After

Before

 When you leave the game room, you enter the laundry area.

 This was a plain cement floor, open ceiling to the joists with 60 years of homeowner decisions displayed in wire and pipe, dingy cement block walls an old broken dishwasher and 1300 lbs of hardened bags of cement. Several windows are broken, covered with plastic or duct tape.

 The floor has drain pipes running across it from the sink, laundry and furnace. But, it had a decent, if mucked up with paint, sink, and the cabinet was in okay shape too. Just out of date and ugly.

 When you walk past the sink cabinet, you can see the bathroom destination down the hall there, with the furnace, coal chimney and water heater to the left. Plus, a toilet drain pipe for good measure.

 The bathroom, once you arrive, isn't too bad. Yes, the floor is ugly, the walls are bland, and there is a plastic wreath decoration with a Hawaiian theme, but there is a decent sink and medicine cabinet and a huge shower.

 Your trip back from the loo is not a pleasant one either. Not a great start to the day, in my opinion.
So, solutions?
Paint. Again, lots of paint! Masking the flaws and enhancing the attributes, replacing the windows and getting creative.

 A new washer and dryer in white make it a laundry room! I carried the blue/purple floor throughout the basement and the colorful tied rugs.

 The sink cabinet got a coat of Bedford Gray, and the handles got coated with a bright nickel spray paint (why buy new?) Sink got a good scrubbing with steel wool to remove all the grime and paint. The wall needed a dose of happy and got it with a leftover of fabric from the bargain table at the fabric store. The long oak mantle was a $5 steal from a garage sale, as was the cheeky chamber pot used for laundry detergent. An antique mirror, not fine antique but definitely old, bounces around a bit of light and catches the eye. The ceiling is an eyesore, and a problem. But, it improved with a covering of woven wire with white lights poked into it. The lights make it more cheerful, and you don't see so much what above them. They are a "yellow brick road" to the bathroom.

 I chose to ignore the drain pipes as not worth the trouble to raise up the floor to cover them, making the ceiling even lower! But the furnace and water heater needed to disappear.  Four old wood doors from the Restore cost $50, and make for a mobile wall. The narrow space between the chimney fireplace and the toilet pipe showed the water heater in between, but some doors removed from the kitchen cabinets I was getting rid of, stacked nicely to fill that space.  The toilet drain was ugly, dirty and too far out to incorporate into my "wall". So, I covered it with hemp rope, which cleaned it up and made it less utilitarian.

 The bathroom was pretty easy. Paint. Paint floors, Paint walls, Paint ceiling, paint sink cabinet and medicine cabinet. Make it pretty, clean, simple and inviting.

 Return walk from bathroom to start your day should be a pleasant one!
And, not only does this basement feature a laundry sink, it also has a laundry folding table. Envy.
Once the concrete and dishwasher were removed, I painted the old work bench Bedford Gray, skirted it with burlap for storage underneath and tada! A place to fold laundry, or wrap presents....sure do wish I had this space at my house!

 That is the Salem House basement- minus the last remaining room in the house that has yet to be tackled. It's a doozy. Pink carpet, "pine" paneling, a fluorescent light fixture that the dry wall was cut to go around? Miles of television cable and a large pipe sticking out into the room - a pipe that goes no where, just sticks out- at about waist height. An adventure in creativity waiting to happen.