Time for our first house reveal! We’re so exited! For the first reveal we’ll show you the living room in the apartment we’ve made in our basement. We’ll show you how to make a living room all the way from scratch. Read further to learn more!

• What We Started With
• The Building Process
• Installing Drywall
• Time To Paint
• Laying Laminate Floors
• Adding mouldings
• Installing electrical
• Living Room Décor
• Finished Result

What We Started With

So, we basically started out with nothing. Our basement had not been in used for anything else than storage, so we only had brick walls and concrete floors. This meant that we had a lot of work in front of us to make it a full liveable apartment. But that was our goal. We lived in the first floor while we made the apartment. And because we did almost everything ourselves, it took us some time. The first six months of our renovation project both of us also still worked. And that meant that we couldn’t have continuous work going on. We mainly focused on the outside of our house the whole summer and as long as the weather would allow it. When it started to get colder we began inside in our basement. The photo above show you what it looked like before we started. Sorry for the bad quality, lighting were terrible down there!

The Building Process

The first thing we did when we started in the basement was to remove some concrete walls that where not load-bearing. Then we took up big parts of the concrete floor. Because parts of it were higher than the rest. Once that was done, we replaced the windows. And after that we could start laying insulation and floor heating. On top of that we pored 3 m3 with cement to make a level, new floor in the whole apartment. Finally, we could start to build our wooden frames, add insulation and finish all the electrical work. We (ehmm..Pascal) installed a new fuse box and all new electrical wires in the whole basement. The frames need to be build following the standard, which at least here means building 60-60 cm frames. If you want to do the building yourself like we did, make sure you hire in people for all parts where professionals are required.  We were making an apartment in the basement that was separate from the rest of the house. Because of that we needed to follow some extra rules regarding fire safety. And we needed to build to reduce noise between the two living areas. That included for instance, making a floating ceiling using brackets, and making a frame hanging in these brackets.

Installing Drywall

To follow the rules and make a floating ceiling, we needed to put two layers of drywall in the whole ceiling attached to the frame we’d installed (that’s what they call a floating ceiling). After that we could start on the walls. Follow this link to check out great prices on drywall. Installing all the drywall took us some time, but what a transformation once that was all up! If you have the right tools, putting up drywall is easy-peasy. You need to either buy or rent an automatic screw driver. That makes the job go so unbelievable fast. The job with plastering all the drywall in the basement we hired in people to do. They did it in just 10 days, while we were taking some time off, enjoying life together with family visiting from the Netherlands!

Time To Paint

My favourite part of all projects – the painting! Do you love painting just as much as I do? For me it’s the feeling that you’re almost finished. And the fact that with paint everything becomes more beautiful. The plastering crew were ready, and it was time for us to paint. First, we primed all walls and the whole ceiling. Check out Byggmax for paint here.

Then we painted the whole ceiling two times with a matte classic white colour. And we were suddenly ready to start on the different colours. Since we’ll focus on the living room in this post, we won’t reveal too much details from the other rooms.

The living room we painted in the colour “Marrakesh” from Jotun. It’s a sand-ish colour that we really love. All walls were painted two layers with this colour. First the edges, and then the whole wall with big rollers. Painting goes so fast! Especially when you have an empty space to play around in. In our whole house, both outside and inside we’ve used paint from “Nordsjø” (or “Flexa” as it’s called in some countries, same company- different name).

Laying Laminate Floors

Once all walls were painted, we could start to lay the floor in the whole apartment. As said we already had installed electrical cable heating in the concrete floor. So, it was just left for us to roll out foam, and lay our laminate flooring. Suddenly we had a room that looked almost finished! Depending on the type of laminate you buy, the instruction can vary. Always follow the instructions of your floor. We had a click system floor, no glue or spikes where needed. So, we could lay it really fast. Check out different laminate floors here.

Adding mouldings

Once the floor was laid, we could start adding floor mouldings in every room. Then we added mouldings around the windows and doors as well. As you can see, we went for quite simple, not too thick mouldings. Byggmax has a great selection, check them out here. We wanted to keep the apartment modern and we’re very happy with the result.

Installing electrical

Then to Pascal’s number one favourite part of the whole project: installing all the electrical. Switches, sockets, lights and lamps. We went with all black switches and sockets. And for the floor heating switches, they were originally white. And we ended up spray painting the covers of them to make them match the rest completely. Have a look at these beautiful black switches and sockets from Elektroimportøren.

In our living room we bought a big glass lamp as you can see on the photo. If you want to have something similar, check this one out by pressing here.

Living Room Décor

We were ready to move in furniture, and I’d been planning and waiting for this for a long time. It took some time before the apartment actually felt lived in. And before we were completely happy with the decor. Mainly this was because as soon as the basement were finished, we started on our first floor! And we where so busy there that we forgot the basement for a little while. Because we moved down all the furniture from upstairs, it felt quite over-furnished in the beginning. But, after some time we managed to give everything a place. And somehow, we managed to make it look like we had more space and less furniture that what we actually had. Score: Decorator-Small space 1-0.

Finished Result

When we finished decorating, our finished result living-room-made-all-the-way-from-nothing looked like this! We’re so happy with the end result and how everything came together. It’s safe to say we sacrificed blood, sweat and tears to pull this off all by our self! Of course we owe a big thanks to my dad and everyone of our families and friends that has given us a hand!

The living room is just a small part of our 70 m3 apartment in the basement. We’ll show you guys everything room for room, in reveals just like this! Next reveal will be our bath room! Are you coming back to read it? Sign up to our email list and receive an email for every time we post something new! Thanks for reading!