basement inspiration

We have an unfinished basement. We'd like to have a finished basement. So we can build something fabulous like this. . .

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Or this. . .

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Or this. . .

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But we'll probably endup with something more like this (minus the rocking chair). . .

traditional staircase design by new york architect SchappacherWhite Ltd.

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since Handyman is pretty firm on having the entertainment technology housed in a closet under the steps. I can just add little frames to the steps in the above photo and we both win.

But we've needed to take a number of baby steps before we can start framing and finishing the space.

One of the steps we've taken is to rid the space of the extra stuff that we don't want to frame around, like extraneous gas pipes and plumbing lines. Our space is pretty small, so we want to take advantage of all it.

After a little snaffu with the garbage disposal and a yucky incident of the plumbing it feeds into "throwing up," we decided it was time to re-plumb our main stack. It took less than day, which is good, because it's usually not fun to go without water much longer than that, especially on the day you were scheduled to have your little one's 1st birthday party. (Needless to say, we rescheduled that one.)

And now we have all new nice and modern plumbing. We also capped and removed an old stack that ran to a dry well in the backyard. Now it's all consolidated into one nice little space that we can frame around without creating extra an bulkhead, bump out, or soffits.

A bunch of the old removed plumbing. And yes, the whole rest my basement is the same painted green color.

And sadly, this box is still patiently sitting in my garage awaiting its new home in scrap metal heaven, because this is not the kind of stuff you can just dump in your garbage can for the next trash day.

You can also see how old and corroded it was getting inside.

Here's a photo of the where the old stack was, all capped. Now it can hide away behind the drywall.

Pretty boring stuff*, but it makes me happy. And it's one baby step closer to customizing our little yellow cape.


*If you don't find it boring, there are tons of resources out there. Bret picked up a plumbing how-to book at the home improvement store, but there are also lots of online resources out there, and the local libraries often carry a large selection of books for DIYers.