Basement Design, Round 4

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It’s about that time…we’re moving back into our basement for renovation round 4! When I said slowly but surely we are trying to make our house our home, I really meant sloooooooowly.

Knowing that this home is potentially our forever home (or at least throughout raising our babies) and knowing how many unforgettable memories we’re going to make within these walls, we want to create it exactly the way we want it.

We want our home to be a reflection of us. Our style. Our vibes.

A place that literally light us up everyday. To create a space that inspires us daily!

Working in this creative industry, at times, can be emotionally, physically and creatively draining. And we’re mindful of that to avoid burnout.

When remodeling our kitchen, one of my favorite humans, Mercedes Austin, owner of Mercury Mosaics, told me, “create a space you love, and your life will launch off of that.”

I repeat this many times a day when helping clients create their space and also to myself. After channeling that message and doing what Jamie and I wanted to do within our home throughout our kitchen remodel, I couldn’t agree with the meaning of the message more. We simply feel good when we’re just present within a space that gives us life!

Not only do we want our home to be a reflection of who we are, but we also want our entire home to be a sanctuary to get our creative juices flowing daily.

So, finally, we’re excited to finish up our basement, after phase four.

Giving you a quick rundown of the phases we’ve done over the last three years:

1. Current state when we bought our home.
2. Painted walls,  built-ins, new white trim, new decor.
3. Took cabinets from our kitchen, repainted and added in a bar. 
4. THE GAME PLAN…dun…dun…dun….

Here’s also the flip side of the view we’re showing you of our full basement, since we’re only talking about this back-half/bar area here:

Right beyond this couch here is where the bar is going…

Wanted to make sure we gave you all the full scope of the room!

So here it is, GAME PLAN – PHASE 4.

After repurposing our former kitchen cabinets and creating a bar, once we finished, we knew there was something missing.

I’m not a huge fan of the ledges in basements, but I get why each home has them. I can live with the ones by the window but that one on this back wall that was serving no purpose, so we knew we had to do something with it. Since we had just created a bar and I had nowhere to put our cute glasses, I wanted to do some sort of shelving. Since we have floating shelves in our kitchen, I wanted to do something different in the basement. We also painted the walls white and Jamie wasn’t a fan. He thought it felt too cold, so I also knew we needed to warm it up a bit with some color and character!

Immediately, we thought of our favorite tile elves over at Mercury Mosaics!

Mercedes came over and we chatted for hours on what we could do to the space, and after multiple conversations and back and forth this is what those tile elf magicians came up with…

When the team sent me this picture, I screamed and cried!

I’m not joking when I say when you start to let go of how society tells you how your home or you should look and instead start to designing your life for what you want to live in, it’s freeing.

This is exactly what Jamie and I envisioned and it plays so perfectly off our newly renovated kitchen and bathroom.

I LOVE doing collaborations with Mercury Mosaics, it’s always so much more than just a collaboration. And she wrote a whole blog post on the meaning of collaboration from a brand perspective on construction2style, so make sure to check it out if that interests you.

After talking through our basement vision with Mercedes for what we wanted to create in our space, of course, she rounded up and knew exactly who needed to be involved. The team behind Mercury Mosaics not only surrounds themselves with people who do badass work but who are really, good, genuine people.

So hello to Darcy and Ben from Solid Metal Arts. 

Since we have floating shelves in our kitchen, we had this vision for something a little different. I love the look of suspended shelving, especially in a bar area. I had this design vision in my head but didn’t know how to get it on paper. Luckily with Jordan by my side, I tried to sketch a few things out and within a matter of minutes she had drafted it up perfectly on Sketch-Up for exactly the look I was going for.

We sent the drawings over to Solid Metal Arts and within a couple weeks time, they gave us some behind the scene pictures of it all coming together exactly how we imagined.

I can hardly wait to see what these babies look like in front of that tile!

Even with the tile and suspended shelving, we knew we needed something else. I come from a game playing family and Jamie comes from a motocross riding family, so every Saturday night our home is usually filled with friends and family wanting to watch the race.

We usually just pile on the couch and around the floor to watch the TV, so we thought we’d try to incorporate the best of both worlds and create a little game table in the back near the bar area. We also want our basement/sport watching area to feel cozy. So we knew we had to warm it up!

Room & Board is one of our favorite brands to buy from and actually this couch we have in our basement came from them years ago. So it seemed only fitting to partner with them! And they also happen to just be up the street from us. Every time we drive up 101, we get to look at them and always get a smile on our face, so we’re beyond excited to incorporate some of their new spaces into our space.

With Jamie’s bench we’re adding in the Aria round table with a cowhide and dodd leather storage ottoman. Another super cool thing is that Mercury Mosaic’s artwork is now featured on their end and drink tables! So we are also including the Doro 18″ and 12″ drink tables to go along with it that will compliment our backsplash perfectly.

We couldn’t be more excited to collaborate with Room & Board, Mercury Mosaics, and Solid Metal Arts on this basement finale! And if you all have any questions about the process, timeline, tutorial, pricing, etc., we’d so appreciate you letting us know so we can create more content to answer those questions.

Time to get to tiling…until next time,
Morgan