Getting there: new flooring goes down

The basement is coming along. There is still a fair amount of finishing work to be done, but I love it. I am juggling all these ideas in my head:

- Built ins by the fireplace, or move the cabinets from upstairs down to the new family room

- Put the hand me down cream loveseat (looks like new) in the new family room or switch it with the comfy upstairs couch

- Paint the furniture for downstairs white or shades of grey

- Leave the ottoman as brown leather or try to slipcover it, perhaps in the burlap coffee sack I have laying around (see this post)

The best kind of decisions as far as I am concerned. Just a question of what kind of pretty do I want. Love it.

As I am a BEFORE/AFTER junkie I thought I would include a few progress shots of the basement. A few BEFORE/DURING shots if you will.

The new family room BEFORE. Checkout the vertigo inducing plaid wallpaper that was everywhere. We honestly spent 10 minutes looking for the electrical panel in this room, it was hidden by plaid.

DURING. This is a hint at the new wall colours Classic Grey up top and the ever popular Cloud White below. There will be a Shaker style panelling on this wall. A version of something on almost every decor blog I read that they refer to as board and batten. All with MDF, hopefully cheap and easy. See the floors here? Nice, eh? That red stuff is the vapor barrier/underlay so just ignore it.

The bottom landing BEFORE. Nice white walls and green carpet. There is now a bathroom where that laundry room once was and the stair runner is gone.

The bottom landing DURING. Can you believe there was green lino under the green carpet? It looks like industrial flooring you would see in a school or something. Now it is the nice laminate like the family room.

A wide shot of the plaid family room BEFORE. There was a wood stove there initially but we removed it right away due to house insurance requirements. And sold it to some crazy guy off Craigslist.

And here is the family room DURING. My lovey was just putting the new (very cheap) floor down in this picture! New insulation, drywall, potlights (the whole basement rewired actually), and a lovely gas fireplace. I know it is just an empty room but it looks beautiful to me.