The Start of My New Office/Craft/Exercise/Storage Room

It did not take long for me to find a use for "my blog." I plan on using this as a journal of all my projects. I have so many of them I will have to live to be 783 years old in order to finish  them all. At the moment, I am most desperate to have a place of my own. There are still two college students living at home and for a year now, my MIL and her sister have been living with us. If I want to craft, bring work home, or sew I have to find a spot, bring all my supplies, tools and equipment and set up shop. Of course, I never had everything I needed and would search all over the house trying to remember where I last left whatever it was I was looking for.

When my husband's new job allowed him to work from home; I offered to convert the storage area under the sunroom into a new office for him. He preferred the small one he was in. So what could I do? I decided to make a room for myself.

I started by cleaning out all the "stuff" we have been collecting in there. Ugh! Dirty, dusty, dingy and disgusting. Several trips to the Salvation Army and I am still cleaning, sorting, packing and getting rid of tons of, "why did I save this?", "what is this?" and "OMG, I forgot I had this!!".  I still have two storage racks of this to get rid of and tons of boxes scattered throughout the house. The rest of this weekend will be devoted to moving and tossing the rest of collection.

As you can see, I am starting from a blank slate. The wall you are looking at with the window was the exterior of original house. When we had the sunroom added, since we paid for the backhoe for the whole day, it did not cost us anymore to dig a full basement as it would if they only dug a crawl space. Of course, we paid a little more for concrete and the forms but it was well worth it. You can see I still have more "stuff" to get out of the room.

After, the concrete was poured, we hired a company with a huge, wet saw to come in and they used the other basement window as the start of cutting out a doorway into the basement of the original house. You can see the door opening into the basement. It is a exterior door as the basement is unheated.

The basement has stayed dry for the 8 years since it was poured but we do need to run a dehumidifier in the summer. (That's the white box in the corner). I worry about mold and mildew, so I have been doing a lot of research on-line on how to treat the walls and floors. So the next step will be prepping the walls. The plan is to paint the walls and floor with a deep penetrating silicate sealer. I have found many, many advertised on the web, but I think we will go to our local masonry supply store.