Plans and Progress - Basement edition

Well turns out we are making pretty good progress on our basement makeover. Thanks to my Grandfather and Matt we almost have all of the framing work done for the family room side! Cant do much of anything on my Mom's apartment side until we get a bit of a thaw (and all the snow gone) so we can have someone come and give us an estimate for her entrance.

So like I said we have been going straight forward getting everything framed out for the family room side, and incidentally my mom's bathroom :). Next up is getting all the plumbing ran, and/or reran, and the electrical followed by the sheetrocking.

So I am going into design mode. And since this last Snowstorm threw us a major curve ball in the form of a non-working snowblower and we had to take a chunk out of our budget to replace said snowblower (because seriously. not. shoveling. that driveway of ours :) and we are in need of a heat oil delivery for which the delivery truck needs to make it up the driveway) looks like we are going to really have to chomp down on that budget and find some really spectacular deals!

Such as this one :)

We are planning on making the family room a kind of a fun zone with games and what not so I came up with the idea of putting a swing down there...Matt took it one step further and said lets not do one but two and not have them stationary but put them on tracks so you can move them around...Well I went searching and the ones we originally liked were around $70-$80 soooooo not in our budget!

Then I found this lovely....perfectly priced at $16 so I ordered two :)

They may be plain and white right now, but I figure with a little bit of DIY TLC I can turn them into something fun and colorful like this ($80 chair from Better Homes and Gardens)

And while we (ok I) are (am) talking seating arangements, we were planning on having a bunch of bean bags down stairs (again going with the fun theme), but I was searching online today and holy schmoly, those things are pretty expensive for a decent size one...We will keep it in mind, however I seriously don't think we should be paying $100 a piece for some chairs (still cheaper {and more fun} than a couch though in retrospect).

I did find this though (also $100 and didn't really get great reviews) ...

The thing that I liked the most about it is that it unzips and lays out flat turning into a "bed" pretty neat huh? I think the design looks pretty straight forward so again I am going to look into going the DIY route and price out what fabric and foam filling would cost to make my own (and therefore also fix the issues that people who bought the pictured item didn't like). It reminds me alot of the "spare bed" my grandma Handy made for my dad that I got to use for all my sleep overs. And having two girls we wont be having *any* of those in the future now will we :)