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Basement Planning – Modern Arts and Crafts

Our basement has been on our minds lately.  We're going to meet with our contractor soon to discuss options but if everything falls into place it will be our big project for 2011.  Trying to get a plan in our heads is such an undertaking!!  We have to think of all the nitty gritty stuff like plumbing and electricity but we also want to visualize the space as what it will eventually look like and how it will be used!  We can't really get started planning the electricity before we know where we need lights and outlets so we're trying to think through everything!  Brain = full.

In keeping with the original 1920's feel of our house which we love (all the woodwork and the built in hutch, etc) we are challenging ourselves to consider how to blend the new basement with our 90 year old house.  Our master suite looks a lot more contemporary than our main floor which we may eventually change.  Although we like a more contemporary look too, we'd rather have cohesion among rooms and floors in our house.  So since we're not willing to tear out the hutch, tall baseboards and craftsman style window woodwork, we're hoping to recreate it downstairs!

We learned a lesson from one of the houses in our neighborhood we snuck into visited during an open house. The main floor had amazing woodwork including this jaw-dropping dining room.

But the basement was finished in a very different style.

There's nothing wrong with the basement itself but you would never know it was the same house as the first photo.  We want to try our hardest to match our 1920 Arts and Crafts style in our basement remodel.  The only problem is... Arts and Crafts style is so expensive!  That's why they don't make houses as ornate as they used to. 

Our objective: Add elements of Arts and Crafts style into our modern basement without spending a fortune.

The key to Arts and Crafts is in the woodwork.  We're going to try to mimic some of that woodwork but instead of using high grade wood we'll paint inexpensive MDF and alder wood in a nice crisp white as we did upstaris in our master bedroom.  The paint covers the fact that the wood isn't high quality while at the same time brightening up the space - which is always good in a basement!

Walls

A lot of bloggers we follow have done DIY board and batten with painted MDF to save money.  We're planning to join the bandwagon!  Board and batten is a really classic style (it's actually in that dining room picture up above) and will help break up our 20x11 family room.  Here are some of the blogs we've seen use board and batten, doesn't it look great?!

Rambling Renovators

Its the little things that make a house a home

The Nester

And while we were in the middle of writing this we saw that one of our favorites, Centsational Girl, added another board and batten project to the interwebs!  Perfect timing!

Ceiling

The dining room picture above shows off really cool Arts and Crafts beams.  It would be impractical to do beams in our basement since the ceilings will be on the shorter side as it is, but I came across a photo of a similar style beam that was only about an inch thick. 

Showing247

That seems like a potential way to break up the ceiling in our basement bedroom (excuse the horrible picture, see why we need to renovate??).

In fact, see the small dip in the ceiling on the left?  It's a pipe that pokes about in inch into the room but it's only a few inches wide.  We could incorporate this into the ceiling architecture so it looks like it's supposed to be there!  Cheap architectural interest that also hides a blemish?  Bonus!

We're also planning to custom build door frames and window trim to match the style of the woodwork on our main floor and we have grand plans for a built in bookcase which would also reflect the Arts and Crafts style.

But for now, we're still just in the dreaming, planing and financial saving mode so we have many miles to go before we sleep enjoy our finished basement!

Check out the rest of our basement posts!