A Busy Basement Makeover

Project by: Jess
Location: Bellevue, Washington

This past June, Jess found herself working with some fabulous life changes, a new baby & a new home, along with a less fabulous life addition, mold. After a successful mold eviction, Jess and her husband Chris set about creating a cozy home for three.

From Jess: June 1st, 2016 we moved from our little Seattle home that we were paying WAY too much in rent for, to my parent’s basement apartment allllll the way over in Bellevue. Well we thought we were moving in. The day we went to clean and paint, we found a lingering stench that wouldn’t leave even after layers and layers of bleach (my new favorite thing). That lingering smell was the lovely invader we all deal with in the Pacific Northwest. Mold. Let me just pause and say Chris is brilliant. He does maintenance work for a number of apartments in Seattle, but he has never renovated an entire apartment including gutting, mudding, plumbing, etc. He (we) did it. A month later we are living in a custom tiny dream home of 400 square feet.

The linoleum and appliances were molded out. Essentially everything was gutted. New drywall was mudded into the bathroom and kitchen. A duct fan was installed in the kitchen. A new seal was put on the toilet. Toxic mold killer was applied and scraped from the concrete floor. By the end of all of this, everything in this apartment was torn out and cleaned or taken to the dump. Every surface was bleached, treated, and painted over with KILZ. It was a nasty, nasty job. And we can now say, we did it ourselves.

Once all of the major jobs were done, it was time to paint. With it being a basement, the brighter the better so we chose white. There was a Christmasy feel with the green walls and red floor that had to go. We didn’t want to risk the possibility of any more mold to grow, so we tossed the linoleum idea. We didn’t have the time to do tile, so we went with keeping the concrete floors. But the best part was painting it black.

You can see more on Jess’s blog Not a Mute.

Thanks, Jess!

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