Framing? Why not add a whole new room?!

Mike and I have been putting some time into the basement lately. Seeing as we need to sell our home, we are finishing the basement to get the most out of the sale. Good plan, no?

Anyhoo, we were under the impression that we had finished framing the ol' basement. Last spring/early summer Mike's family came and helped frame out most of the basement, as well as run a bunch of the electrical. More recently with the help of our friend Cade we (basically meaning Mike and Cade) were able to frame out the bathroom and hallway, as well as extend the closet in the second basement bedroom to make it large enough to actually hang clothes in. Yay! I must say we were very proud and relieved to have the framing complete. And then...

Sunday afternoon we got a phone call from our friend John who happens to live in the same model of house as we do. John has been helping to finish the basement in his house and their process is nearly complete, so they thought maybe we'd want to come check 'er out while we are in the process of finishing our basement.

Now first off, this basement was fabulous. They put in all these great additions like hardwood floors, fireplace, kitchenette, etc. Seeing as we're simply finishing the basement to sell the house we aren't that interested in putting the work in for hardwood floors, a fireplace and kitchenette, but I tell you if we were going to live here another 4 or 5 years I would be totally into that plan!

Something else they did in the basement, however, was to truly utilize the utility room. Any of you who've seen our basement know that the utility room is much larger than necessary. I've been telling Mike for months that there must be a better way to use that space but we weren't able to come up with a great solution. After visiting our friend's basement, however, the solution has been made very clear: box off the actual utility area and use the rest of the space as a sort of homework nook.

I'm calling it a nook and I think Mike likes that name because he called it a nook this morning. The poor boy stayed up all hours of the night framing the nook out and it looks great! (To be fair I stayed up and helped as much as I could, but eventually my brain and eyes shut down and I had to go to bed.) He had to rewire a light and cut a doorway into what used to be the hallway wall, as well as frame out the utility area, and he did an awesome job. The change not only adds usable square footage to the basement, it also keeps the open feel of the upstairs floorplan and totally adds a fun twist to the area. It's not a huge space, but it offers a great desk area for the family computer and we are so excited about the change! We think buyers will really love it and hopefully it will be a bit of a selling point to the house.

Okay, done rambling. Consider yourselves caught up and informed on the lives of Kylie and Mike. I'll let you know if anything exciting or important comes up.