House Project: Storage Room
Allow me to introduce you to the creepiest room in the house:
We affectionately call it “the kill room.”
But it’s so fun to sing in there! Ha!
And that is NOT what it looks like now!
Who knows what this room was. A bomb shelter? A cellar? It’s right under our foyer and has hella thick walls and isn’t useful for much other than storage (and playing around with the echo). So we decided to make it a storage room. First though, a few changes.
Dad and Steven power washed it on February 7th, which helped a ton:
Already looking better!
Steven ordered* Rust-Oleum EpoxyShield Basement Floor Coating to cover the floors, walls and ceiling. That required a bit of prep work, before we could paint (here’s their how to video).
First, Steven got all the random pieces of concrete off the surfaces of the room, using a hammer and chisel. There were pieces stuck on the floors, walls and ceiling.
On February 24th, we used Rust-Oleum EPOXYShield Concrete Patch to patch some of the cracks and fill in ridges/divots on the walls.
Hence the spots in the photos below!
Then the real fun began… We spent about four hours on February 27th rinsing the walls – getting more chunks (and stains) off with steel brushes,
then using a concrete etch to clean all the surfaces to prepare them to receive the paint.
The picture on the right is so much darker because we had to take the installed light out of the room to do this part of the project, and use a floor lamp!
Each surface received the etch,
it sat on the surface for 1-2 minutes, then we scrubbed it with a brush,
then rinsed and squeegeed each surface THREE TIMES each. Hence it taking four hours.
But! By the end, the water we squeegeed out was coming off clear (it was important the room be very clean so the paint would adhere). Yay!
Then we waited for it to dry out. We put a dehumidifier in the room and ran it for a few days. On March 4th, we taped a piece of plastic on the floor to test and see if any condensation showed up…
… nope! All good! Ready to paint!
I vacuumed the room March 12th (unfortunately, we didn’t have a big time chunk in our schedule to start painting until then!) and we got to painting! You simply pour part A in to part B, stir it for three minutes, then let it sit for thirty minutes before painting.
We started with the ceiling (ouch – my shoulders!) so any drips on the floor or walls would be painted over later. One set of this paint is supposed to be enough for 250 square feet, and our room is 9’x13’x7′, so we got two sets, hoping that would just be enough.
The first can covered all of the ceiling and the front and back walls (and took us about two hours to paint).
The second can covered most of the rest of the walls (and took a bit less time – just under two hours).
We wondered if a second coat of paint would cover the glossy concrete patches, but we didn’t care enough to find out.
And we ran out of paint. Luckily, Menards (we got the first two sets on Amazon) had it in stock so we got some to finish up painting on March 13th! (Note: there are specific instructions for mixing multiple sets of this paint to make sure the coloring matches, but we mixed one set at at time – they seem to match fine, and it’s a dark storage room – it’s not as important as painting an open space that gets natural daylight/viewed often.)
The floor was really easy to paint compared to the other surfaces, because it was smooth. We spent a lot of time (and extra paint – we used the entire third can) covering up all the bumps and divots on the ceiling and walls (in hindsight, spraying would probably be more effective than using a roller and brush for this type of surface)! Finishing up the walls and floors took us just over an hour.
And the best part about the floor? Doing the “sprinkles”!!!
You paint in roughly 4’x4′ areas, then throw the “sprinkles” on!
This looks goofy because it’s drying.
All painted!
The best part finally arrived yesterday – (after vacuuming up, again) we got to put the shelves in! Basements flood, and we know that ours definitely has, so we want to get things a bit off the floor and in plastic bins. This is one step closer to getting there!
There’s one shelf in the back,
three on the left,
and two on the right.
I can’t wait to start putting all our plastic bins in there! I love organizing! That’s been one of my favorite parts of moving – unpacking and organizing (I’d rather unpack, than pack).
Why’d we go to so much work prepping this room for storage? Because we’re gonna live here forever and we want shiz done right. And, we don’t want the storage room to be gross and creepy. Just creepy. It will be less creepy when we install overhead lights. Soon…
*This means we paid for it. This is not a sponsored post. We bought all this shiz ourselves. I am calling out the brands and showing pictures of what we used for future reference, nothing else.
Themocracy
Great job you guys! Way to get it done right! That’s a huge amount of work but look how great it is already. Well done!
Thank you!!! I’m happy we took the time to make it less gross and actually useful 🙂
You guys did a fantastic job!
Thanks! 🙂
Wow what a lot of work! But it looks so much better! I think having a nice place for storage makes it so much easier to keep everything organized. As a kid I was scared of the unfinished part of our basement, so when my Mom asked me to put anything down there I would refuse,
Thanks! I think it will really help us stay organized, too. And it will be so nice to have these things inside (at the old house, a lot of my decorations, etc. were in the garage and I had to use a ladder to get them down).
Aww, that’s cute!!! Our basement was finished at one point, but surely isn’t anymore. Luckily, it has a few windows that make it less creepy!
Woohooo!! A ton of work for sure, but now you have an awesome usable space to keep SO MUCH stuff organized in! Hoooray for progress!
Yes! I can’t wait to organize!
And now we can decide if we like this paint well enough to use it in the rest of the basement!
Wow, great job. The after looks so much better than before. It definitely looks a lot less creepy.
Thanks 🙂
Wow, your work really paid off! This room looks great now. When we were house hunting, we saw lots of places that had what we called “murder basements.”
Thank you!
Ha! Ha ha. That does NOT surprise me. Basements can get really creepy, really fast!
Hahah, “kill room.” Yes, that’s what it looks like, for sure! You guys should have filmed something creepy in it before you made it into a nice, usable space 🙂
Darn, missed opportunity!
It look’s like it could have been a tornado shelter at one time? But perfect for storage! My daughter loves organizing too, not sure where she got it from, because she didn’t get it from me! What suburb do you live in? I live in the far NW suburbs 😀
I wonder if that’s what it was! What’s interesting (and I want to blog about this) is that we think this room may have been added on later when they turned the porch in to an enclosed foyer (we found an old exterior window INSIDE a wall during upstairs demo last week). Or maybe it was a tornado shelter with outside access that they made inside access to?
That is funny that your daughter is in to it, and you aren’t!
I live far NE – we just moved to unincorporated Zion! I used to live in Round Lake.
Thanks for commenting! I added your blog to my Feedly after Shelly blogged about your meetup! 🙂
I’m so impressed with how “right” of a job you did! I am always tempted to do the quick / easy way… especially about halfway through a project 🙂
Thank you!
Steven is very meticulous and intent on doing things right 🙂 Which is good (since I tend to be more like you!).
It looks great! I am on the same page as you with making that room look nice and be practical because then you will be more excited to use it! I really like organizing things too.
Do the sprinkles have a secondary purpose (other than just looking cool)?
Thanks! I am so excited to use it! I wish I wasn’t getting home so late tonight and tomorrow and could spend a lot of time setting up!
I think they’re just for looks? It certainly does not seem to help with durability as we accidentally scratched some paint off last night. Oops.
Darn! I thought maybe they added some texture to add some grip to the floor. But on second thought I hope they made that paint to be not slippery in the first place!
They definitely add texture! That is a good point – I wonder if the paint would be slippery on concrete?! Hopefully it’s not at all, like you said! 🙂
You two are amazing! When we bought our house, we realized that home-ownership-projects are NOT for us. Therefore, I have deep admiration for those that actually DO improve their humble abode!
On a random note, we had friends who had, what they called, their “Silence of the Lambs” basement – mainly the stairs leading to the basement. They renovated that – to everyone’s relief. And, these same friends (much more into home improvement than I’ll ever be) re-did their kitchen and bathroom with the help of contractor. It was actually pretty cool – he was their ‘consultant’ and worked with them but they did the work. Anyhoo, your place looks great!
Aww, thank you! Steven is SO in to it! He was looking at houses in much worse shape and super excited about fixing them. Ha ha!
Oh wow! That is neat! And sounds like a good set up – I think we need something like that. I kind of feel that way with our contractor, from time to time 🙂
I have not seen Silence of the Lambs! My imagination would never forget it!
Dang, that was a lot of work! I love y’alls energy. The former kill room looks so clean and perfect for storage; jealous of how much space you have for your goodies!
Thank you!!! 🙂 We want to get stuff done while it’s still exciting. I hope we stay this way for a few years. Months? Ha!
Hee hee – I will have to share a pic when it’s full! We still have stuff in warehouse storage, so I am curious how much space we’ll have in the basement after that stuff gets here!
Wow, this was such as huge project! As I was scrolling and reading the post, I was surprised every time I saw a new step that you did. Props for being so thorough; it looks great!
I love that you throw the speckles on the floor. It reminded me of when I went to the Cabot cheese factory and saw a guy throwing the pepper pieces into the Pepperjack cheese vat haha.
Oh man! That has got to be the best job at the cheese factory. Squeeee!!!!