Basement 3: Paint, Door, Trim + Access Panel

It has taken forever, but the basement was finally coming together.  Priming and painting came next.  We also special ordered flooring from Home Depot that we already picked up.  Here’s it is before and after primer…

Do you see that hole in the wall?  The main water shutoff is in there and obviously we need to have access to it.  After failing at a DIY solution, I purchased this handy little panel from Lowe’s.  It was very straight forward to install.  The most annoying part was making sure the cut out matched the panel.  I had to do more taping and mudding.  Then I glued the outside portion to the wall with liquid nails,then primed and painted the entire thing.

Other views:

The walls were painted blue.  The access panel, switch and outlet covers were installed.  This is a closeup of the access panel.  It blends a whole heck of a lot better than what had been there previously!!  Bonus, the kids can’t mess with it.

Next came the floor.  My husband and I hemmed and hawed for a long time over what type of flooring to install… carpet, tile, cork, laminate?  We settled on these vinyl wood-look planks from Home Depot.  We have been thrilled with our choice.  We get complements all the time.  More specifically, the product is: Traffic Master Allure in American Walnut.  The list price is $1.69/sq.ft. and it is a special order item, but there are many many colors, at slightly different prices, some of which are available in the store.

I LOVE THIS PRODUCT.  I installed it directly over the clean concrete floor of our basement.  No underlayment, no glue, no nails, nothing!!  The strips lock together like tongue and groove wood planks.  Same rules for staggering the seams apply.  While installation was not difficult it was time-consuming and killed my hands.  To trim, you cut the strips with hefty scissors or a utility knife.  My hands would have preferred to use a saw. 🙁 

I finished the floor in one afternoon/evening while my husband took the kids to a Halloween party.  We were having a party of our own the next day and wanted the kids to be able to use the basement.  That’s how I roll!  Always DIYing right till the end.  The trim was installed and all the toys brought back downstairs just in time for the guests to arrive.  🙂

We used PVC trim for the base trim.  PVC molding is made for exterior use because it is impervious to rot, decay and insect damage.  Which is exactly why I thought it would be a great choice for my flood-prone basement!  It was just a tad more expensive than regular primed molding, and I think it was totally worth the extra money.  The PVC is already a nice kinda glossy white.  I did not paint over it because you can only use oil-based paint and I didn’t want to get into that.  But there’s no reason to paint it, because it looks awesome just the way it is!!

There was not a lot of info out there on installing this stuff, so let me be the one to tell you… Forget the glue, just nail it in.  I used a pneumatic finish nailer and air compressor.  I tried glue first and it was crap!  It just wouldn’t stay.  I was reluctant to use nails because I knew I didn’t want to paint, or putty, or caulk anything.  And you know what?  I didn’t.  Just nailed those suckers in and left it be.  Can you even see the nail holes?   I’ll make the picture nice and big.

Yuck! You can see that those are the old hinges. I’ll have to replace those.

Last but not least, we replaced the door and door knob.  (The trim around the door was not changed, just painted.)  What a difference!!!  Let’s look at the “before” one more time first.  But that’s not even really a “before,” because that cutout under the stairs wasn’t there when we moved in.  It was a Smart Girl ad-on. 🙂  You can read about the painted stairs in the “after” picture HERE.

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