Remodeling the Basement

Prepare to be impressed. After seeing the basement on countless occasions from Tim's family living here we finally went down and analyzed it because there are going to be new tenants and they have no blood relation and are just friends. All I can say is, I feel so bad that we never made any improvements while Tim's cousins lived here. I didn't realize how bad it was. There is a lot of work to be done/many projects, but here is just a couple that we've tackled right now along with a couple of the before and after pictures (the best part!).

Basement renos thus far:
Painting the whole kitchen, living room, and bathroom a nice, clean, fresh white.
Painting the kitchen cupboards.
Redoing the kitchen countertop.
New Kitchen hardware.
New light covers.
Added two electrical outlets over countertop and moved disposal switch from under sink to above.
New tile backsplash.


As you can see from the below kitchen photos, this kitchen was pretty dated. Using the greatness of Home Depot we found some Rustoleum kits to update the cabinets and countertop. They took a little while to complete (week to fully cure on countertop) but the result is leaps and bounds better.

Diana had covered the mustard backsplash with some contact paper because all the yellow was...well any amount of it was awful so she tried to cover some up.

When removing the paper the whole backsplash just came right off with it. This was the gooey green mess found behind it.

And for the cabinets.

This tile that I used for the backsplash was found by my awesome mom on ksl for $20! It was 20 sheets so it was a dollar a sheet. I looked it up online and it was normally $12-$28 a sheet. Cheapest kitchen makeover ever!

Summary of Before Pictures

And....

drumroll....

the After!

My Dad and brother-in-law Damon were kind enough to take over the backsplash for me. This picture was before we put in the gray grout, so it looked every better afterward.

All together with the two Rustoleum kits, backsplash tile, and new hardware this kitchen remodel (not including the grout and huge bucket of paint that we used everywhere) was under $300! It felt soooo good to work on the house and make these improvements. Although they did take a little longer to execute (mainly due to my lack of planning and having my main work time being Mary's naps) they were definitely worth it. I hope to learn some new skills and make more improvements in the future.