The basement office is a real room now! With walls and everything! That we built and drywalled ourselves!

Too many exclamation points? Sorry, but I’m excited that we really made this room happen.

When I introduced the project of walling off a tiny space in the basement for an office for my husband, we were still early in the drywalling. We had framed out the walls and hung the drywall, but hadn’t gotten to the point where you tape the joints and smooth everything out with joint compound. It didn’t quite look like a real room yet.

To be honest, I was kind of worried about the drywalling. I read several step-by-step drywalling guides before I started. But it was totally fine. I did have to remove and re-do one section of tape where I had bubbles because I didn’t embed it in enough joint compound, but even that wasn’t a big deal. The walls look pretty damn good now, if I do say so myself.

The drywalling did take a while, though. I didn’t get the quick-dry joint compound because I wanted to give myself time to work on it as slowly as I needed before it started to set. But that meant I had to wait a day between layers. Fortunately we didn’t really have a deadline for this office.

After the drywalling was finished came the caulking, and priming, and painting. That stuff that always seems like it will be quick, and then it’s not. At this point I probably would have been tempted to skip the crown molding detail I had planned for this room, but I kind of didn’t have a choice. On the concrete foundation walls the line where the top of the foundation met the ceiling was super jagged and janky. If it was a drywall wall you would tape it and cover it with joint compound, but that wasn’t an option here. So I covered it all up with crown molding.

Another thing I had never done before was install crown molding. I screwed up the cuts so many times at first until I got the hang of it. When you’re cutting crown molding, there are four different cuts depending on which side of a corner you’re doing, and whether it’s an inside or outside corner. And they all have to be done with the molding upside-down on the miter saw. I still have no idea why. Something about the curve of the saw.

In order to get the cuts right I made myself labeled templates with some other scraps of molding I had laying around. And I sketched the cut angle and labeled the top and bottom on every piece I was cutting. That cut waaaaay down on the screw-ups.

Cutting and installing crown molding (and baseboards!) is extra fun when you have a weird little rounded corner. I hate this stupid corner.

I also put crown molding around the little cabinet I built to hide the electrical box. Here’s a terrible photo of what it looked like after we painted.

Yikes, right? Not pretty.

So I built it a little cabinet.

The ugliness is fully accessible, but contained. I discovered that it also makes the room more weather-tight. A ton of cold air comes in through the connection to the wires/conduits outside. I guess that’s why someone had unsuccessfully attempted to solve the problem with expanding foam sealant.

And see that smooth floor? We gave the floor a coat of self-leveling cement. Which was not THAT self-leveling in our experience. But if you scroll back up you can see it did make the floor a lot smoother and more level than it started, so we’re happy with it. We’re putting a rug on top anyway.

What’s next? Well, the room is pretty much done at this point, but there are a few small details to finish. We want to paint the white vinyl window frame so that it isn’t so noticeable, and we’re still waiting on some stuff we ordered. Covid delays mean it’s taking a bit longer than expected, but Steven is already using the space for his office. Hopefully I’ll be able to show off the whole finished space soon!