Not-So-Cold Storage

We have a cold room in our basement.

It looks more like a bomb shelter.

It's musty, drafty, (and cold obviously) and we've never
really used it for its intended purpose. 
We're not really the canning preserves and stockpiling wine types.

We've barely used the room because of how bad

anything that is stored there ends up smelling.

It's been three years, so this fall we finally got around to insulating

and finishing it for regular storage.

This is what it looked like before.

Bare cement walls and exposed beams. And lots of dirt.

Didn't the builders do a fantastic job? Blech. 

Oh yeah, we also found one of these guys.  Double blech.

 The first thing we did was seal the cracks with spray foam. 

We pulled down the beams that weren't needed

and put in new support beams with joist brackets.

(You'll notice I say "we" a lot through this, but mine was more of a supervisory role.)

We sprayed the walls down with bleach and then painted

all of the cement with Kilz paint to provide a mildew barrier.

The room was framed in with 2x4s at the ends but we could only use
2x3s across the long walls because the walls were so warped.

We then insulated the two outer walls and the ceiling with fiber insulation.

It's ugly but it has a higher insulation value than the pink stuff.

Since it isn't going to be seen on a day to day

basis, we hung plywood instead of drywall.

And it made it easier to secure shelving to the walls.

We hung it sideways.

I think it just looks better.

We replaced the exposed bulb with two flushmount lights.

They're exterior lights but I liked the industrial feel of them.

We framed in the doorway with 1x6s and

installed the light switch on the other side of the doorway.
I really like the wider wood planks - it gives it a log-cabiny feel.

Wall to wall shelves were installed on the far end

to hold the Christmas decorations. 

 It's so nice to have a place to put them all now.

Before this we kept them in the furnace room

(so it feels a bit safer having moved the flammables out of danger).  

We reinstalled the Ikea shelves that were in there before

and secured them to the wall to keep them stable.
  

And we carpeted the floor. 

We just used an old 5x7 rug that the dog had chewed the edges of.

I can't believe how much the room holds.

And the room smells like fresh wood instead of fresh wouldn't. (See what I did there?)