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This renovation and makeover is by far my favourite because we decided to create our basement into the ultimate entertainment room.

What started out to be a simple lipstick makeover, turned out to be a work of art for Design with Rev. My design inspiration was the sweet farmhouse look as well as making the space look white & bright.

To begin, let us show you our basement when we purchased the home…

I know. Ghetto right!? This small room was covered in wall to wall 70’s aging beige coloured wall paper, and you can tell that the previous owners did NOTHING to update this room (or house for that matter) since its inception. Where do we begin?!?

First things first, we took down the wall paper, sanded the walls of decade old wall paper glue,  and prepped for painting.

All trim and doors needed a lot of TLC (aka coats of paint and caulking). Then, we decided to do a little extra for the room and added a chair rail and split up the colours to white on white on the bottom and fine silver on the top.

We didn’t replace anything major like closet doors, but we painted them white (from weathered beige) and installed new sleek hardware from the old brassy ones.

On to the furniture….

I used to have a dark brown IKEA KALLAX unit that I used as a TV stand, but Doron insisted on making a custom piece for the entire wall. I agreed as long as it maintained that KALLAX look that I loved so much but in white! Because we kept the same KALLAX cupboard hole dimensions, we were able to buy matching doors that IKEA sells and installed them on this custom shelf.

The next project was to think of how to incorporate more seating in addition to our comfy love seat.  One friday night, Doron was hanging with his friends and ended up sitting on the floor when it dawned on him to build a small custom bench/window ledge for additional seating which fits the farmhouse theme (below)

In one Saturday afternoon, Doron put together a bench from scratch using leftover wood. He painted the base white and stained and lacquered the top to match the rest of the wood accents in the room.

Next our infamous IKEA hack farmhouse coffee table was created…. See an earlier blog post for details on how it was created.

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The next big project we designed was building a bar and added bar seating.

We love the whole industrial table and shelving look, so we decided to buy a few 2×4’s and iron plumbing pipes…

After cutting the wood planks the length of our couch, we sanded and stained them chocolate, and used a satin finish polyurethane. The iron legs were spray painted black to make them pop, and finally all the pieces were put together and screwed onto the wood.

We found 3 rustic bar stools that fit the space perfectly which added even more seating. When unused, the chairs are nicely tucked in and the whole bar table area remains very compact.

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The Bar

After much debate and browsing on pinterest, we decided to make a custom bar counter and shelving. The whole unit was designed and built on 2 things: 1. the doors we found in my dad’s basement, and 2. our beloved wine fridge that we got for a steal on kijiji!

Here we begin with the frame based on the door and fridge measurements.

To maintain the farmhouse look, we made a butcher block countertop by gluing together 4 planks of wood (similar to how we built to coffee table top).

The butcher block countertop was well sanded, stained using chocolate coloured stain, and  lacquered with matte polyurethane. Lastly, Doron finished the look with a wooden back and side splash and incorporated the chair rail into the counter top look.

Before we installed the bar shelf, we added a feature wall by installing hickory coloured laminate flooring behind the bar wall.

Next we installed the stained and lacquered shelf by drilling iron pipes from the wall and ceiling to be able to hold the heavy bottles.

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And then my favourite part!!!!!!!!

We created a wine glass holder HACK by cutting a T Mould and drilled them upside down into the bottom of the shelf. It doesn’t get better than that my friends!!

After all the furniture gets installed, comes the best part…..decorating. The following is the final look of our farmhouse renovated basement.

Hope the farmhouse basement overhaul inspires you! Follow us on instagram at @designwithrev for daily DIY projects and design inspiration!

Love, The Rotmans.