Thankful for our Basement!

We are expecting quite a few friends for a cookout this evening to celebrate Labor Day and it's been pouring down rain ALL day...so today I am VERY thankful for our basement! That being said, it's been well over a year since our basement flooded and we had to rethink everything about how to finish it. I haven't done lots of updates, but it's finally getting to a point where I can decorate. Yay!

 

My first project was completed last December as part of Erik's Christmas present, his running wall:



It's fun to have all of his running awards displayed so they can be seen easily, and I'm glad they aren't cluttering the top of his dresser in our room anymore!

 

The other side of the room was always going to be a play area for the boys, but it originally was also going to be an office area. Lucky for them we had to scrap that plan after the flood! Now they have lots of room to spread out and have fun.

We completely cut out the bottom part of the drywall/insulation and replaced it with a plastic roofing material bordered by PVC boards that serve as baseboards and chair rails. It's not the look I really wanted, but I must say I'm very pleased with how it turned out. And the best thing is that everything is waterproof!

 

I've been scouring Pinterest for a year now trying to get decorating ideas and I've finally decided on a few and taken the time to do them. The first was the art wall for the boys:

The letters are made with an outline of nails and yarn wrapped around them. Then I just screwed binder clips into the wall so the boys can easily hang their drawings and change them whenever they want...without using all of my tape!

The second project was to make big, canvas-like pictures for little cost. I thought about getting engineer prints and making them really big, but finally decided that 12x16 was large enough. I simply printed the pictures at Sam's for less than $3 each, glued them to plywood that was cut to size, spray painted the backs and edges and mod podged over the entire thing. I also glued square dowel rods to the backs of them so that they would stand off the wall when hung, which adds a good touch in my opinion. I was able to do all three pictures for less than $20!

Last but not least, my favorite project to date! This is a combination of about 5 different ideas I found that I liked. I wanted a way to display pictures of the boys and their family and friends, especially all those random snapshot pictures that tend to pile up. I had decided to do a big collage board but wasn't sure how to execute it until after I did the picture project above. Because I liked how it turned out so much I wanted to do something similar. I finally decided to get a big piece of plywood (4'x4') and let the boys fingerpaint it. They obviously enjoyed that:

After they finished I sprayed the sides with black spray paint and added a couple clear coats to protect it. This is how it looked once hung:

 I was already so excited about it I almost didn't go ahead with my original plan of making it a collage board, but then I remembered all the pictures and the special memories they represent so I started adding them:

The idea is to glue on pictures as we get them to create a huge collage of memories. Malachi is already liking the idea - last week our church hosted a few interns from Cypress Wesleyan Church in Columbus and we got to know them because the girls stayed at my parents' house. They came for dinner one evening and Malachi asked to take this picture so he could add it to his board in the basement!

Sarah, Natasha and Bethany - it was so fun getting to know you! Thank you for playing with our boys, taking cute pictures of them and supporting Malachi's Rock Shop! Best of luck with the rest of your internship at Cypress!