Ready for a big before-and-after?  It’s not the prettiest makeover, but it’s a million times better than it was!  It feels like we got rid of 5 tons of junk.  We might have actually…

Originally we intended to just de-clutter, throw stuff away, and organize everything we had piled up in the basement.  But once we started, it seemed like the perfect time to cover the dirt floor with concrete.

So, for 4 Sundays, we began by purchasing (on average) 7 40-pound bags of concrete, hauling it home and pouring ourselves a concrete floor, one bag at a time.

During the week, while waiting for the next slab of concrete to be poured, I was water-proofing the old stone walls. It took 2 to 6 coats of Drylock, and now they are bright white. I love the look of the Drylock too: on top of the stones, it reminds me of the inside of an igloo.

Here’s what that area looked like before:

And then we have this corner, which still needs a little bit of work.  It’s not as messy as it seems though, it’s just all the appliances.  We haven’t poured concrete here yet, but we’re still planning on it, and I need to finish painting the walls.

And the oil tank got a makeover too!  Actually, this was one of the first things I did.  Believe it or not, we had a quart of aluminum paint on hand.  I didn’t think to take a proper “Before” picture, but here it is half-painted, and then fully painted:

Of course, the old metal cabinet got a makeover too, and I love it now.

Our original goal in starting this whole project was accomplished: our tools are organized.  As you can see above, the (relatively few) tools we kept are organized into labeled drawers on wheels.  I’m hopeful we can keep it that way now.

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As usual in our house, a small project turns into a big one, then a huge one.  We were going to simplify and organize our junk in the basement…now we’re water-proofing and pouring concrete (among many other things).  Because of all the extra work we’re doing, we’re not even close to finished yet, but we can show you another one of our simple projects that has made a really big difference.

Remember last year when we fixed up our basement door?  Well, the other side still looked like this:

Adding a light to the hallway was the first thing we did in this simplify-the-basement project.  Then we worked on that ugly wall.  It’s kind of important for this area to not be hideous, because when we have the heat on in the house, we need to keep the basement door open, and the basement door is in the dining room.

We had purchased some faux brick panels and painted them white for another project, but we didn’t end up using them.

So we used them to cover the ugly basement wall.

(Sorry about the photo quality, it’s a dark and dreary day here and I still need to learn how to use the camera.)

Before and after:

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The basement makeover is coming along very well.  It’s not finished, so you can’t see the whole thing yet…we have to have the dramatic before-and-after.  But here’s a mini project I did to get everything started down there.

When we moved in, there was an old metal cabinet.  We were going to move it to a different area, but the whole bottom was rusted and it probably would have fallen apart if we tried to move it.  So we just left it there and loaded it up.  Eventually, we extended the concrete pad it was next to and moved our washer and dryer down there, so the old metal cabinet was in the perfect place to hold my laundry supplies.

Nasty, huh?  But I had an idea.  I suddenly remembered all those paint cans we were trying to get rid of.  When the Hubs saw me go to the garage and bring back paint, he came down to check on me.  I think he gets nervous sometimes when he sees me on a mission with a paint can that he doesn’t know about.

Of course, then I had to blurt out, “You’re not even going to recognize this place next time you come down.”  Crap.  Now I had to think of something amazing to do.  But, I’m glad I said that without thinking, because it gave me the idea to break out more paint cans.  And it is looking, very, very different down there now.

Anyway, I washed up the cabinet and painted it a pretty minty blue green.

It has cheered up the laundry area so much (compared to what it was) that it’s making me consider painting the washer and dryer too (like this adorableness, minus the polka-dots).  If all goes well, we’ll have a big basement reveal for you next week!

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The kitchen is almost complete, but I’m going to wait until I have the rest of the room painted (this week) to show you the photos.  In the mean time, we worked from early morning to after 8 pm yesterday cleaning up the basement, installing lighting and rewiring a bunch of poorly done electrical work.

Since we moved in, we have tried organizing the basement (as in a full day of organizing) at least a half-dozen times.  And still, it has been a constant mess.  If it weren’t for the fact that our washer and dryer are down there, I’m not sure there would even be a path to walk through half the time.  So we’re organizing my favorite way: getting rid of stuff.

We do have at least two of most of our tools, partly because we often work on large projects together, and it’s way easier for each of us to have our own.  But often, when we start a project early on a Sunday morning, we spend a good hour attempting to gather all the tools from the basement.  Some of which, we cannot find because tools are all just in random boxes, piled on top of each other.  We end up giving up the search and going to the store to buy the tool again.  It’s terrible.

Then we finally tackle our project mid-day and all the tools we used go into a random box, and then back to the basement to start over.

This is why, when I started learning more about serious simplifying and minimalism, I was really struck by a couple lines from the Organizing post from The Minimalists:

“No matter how organized we are, we must continue to care for the stuff we organize, cleaning and sorting our methodically structured belongings. When we get rid of the superfluous stuff, however, we can focus on life’s more important aspects…Or we could, of course, reorganize our basement again.  Once the excess stuff is out of the way, staying organized is much easier anyway.”

So yesterday, in addition to the re-wiring we had to do, we decided that we were organizing the basement, for the last time.  In order to do that, we have to get rid of stuff.  A lot of stuff.

These photos were taken before our big yard sale, so some of the junk was already gone, but the spots were just filled in with more stuff.  We burned all the random, useless pieces of wood in the fire pit, put a big free sign on the curb and piled loads of stuff out there, and we filled up two garbage cans of trash.  It looks a lot better this morning, but we’re not done.  Hence, the lack of “After” photos in this post.  We’re going to continue this project this week, along with finishing the stairs and the kitchen.  And then, hopefully by the end of the month, we will have a nice, simplified, organized basement to show you.

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