Way back in June, BooMama issued a challenge for all of us who needed to do a few things around the house…some accountability for a few things that, perhaps, I we had been procrastinating about.

At that time, we had just “finished” turning half of our basement from a concrete-walled cellar into some much-appreciated living and playing space. And I put “finished” in quotes because it was not quite. Finished, that is. The painting was not yet complete. Some molding was missing (and, as a matter of fact, it still is). And there were five or six other things that we had just run out of steam on… But we were very, very close.

For BooMama’s Before & After challenge, I decided to list some of the little things that would move the basement project closer to Finished and further from “finished.” You can see my original post here.

Though my Before & After pictures are neither dramatic nor colorful nor exciting, they still make me happy. They really are little things, but now they are permanently checked off on the Basement To-Do List. And that’s a good thing.

So without further ado, here are the goals and their accompanying pictures. I fully intended to write “before” and “after” on the pictures, but I confess: I’ve run out of picture-modifying energy. And so, the before is always on the left and the after is always on the right.

1. Choose and acquire a mirror for the bathroom. It’s a simple mirror, but the frame coordinates with the vanity and completes the bathroom. (Though if you look closely, you’ll see one of our still-uncompleted items — we need to install a handle on vanity’s bottom drawer. Oops!)

2. Touch up paint around the main room. There were many similar little splotches of wrong-colored paint, but I just chose one representative sample for you. You’ll have to trust that I took care of the other touch-ups, too. You’ll also have to trust that my pathetic ability to take matching Before & After shots is something I’m aware of, but did not have the patience to fix.

3. Fill nail holes in bathroom and paint over them. Again, the entire bathroom molding was “decorated” with lovely nail holes, but they are all now nicely covered. I’m just showing you a portion of the baseboards that were particularly hole-y. Also, let me apologize again for my photography. Some pictures were taken during the day, some in the evening, and I am clearly not a professional photographer, or else they wouldn’t all have wonky color-cast issues.

4. Paint the bathroom door. Here, you only get an after picture. When I took the before picture, the door was already primed, and the contrast in pictures just wasn’t enough to show the difference. I can assure you, though, that the door looks far better with two coats of paint on it than it did before.

5. Put some kind of window covering on the single window in the basement. I ended up just going with a sheer blind. As you can see in the before picture, when you look out our basement window, you see the lovely walls of a window well. In fact, the primary reason we had a window put in was for safety/code reasons — to provide an exit from the basement, which previously had none. However, we are quite happy with the amount of light the window lets in…just not the view. A sheer blind seems to do the trick — we get all the light, while softening the appearance of the window well to almost-unnoticeable. And since this part of the room is the play area, I decided to keep things simple so that small children are less likely to destroy any lovely curtains. As time goes on, I may decide to do something different with the window, but I’m pleased with it for now.

6. Paint above the shower. Um….oops? Totally forgot that I put this one on my list, until I was writing up this post. I’m just about out of white paint, so I’ll have to go get some more and do this project. Eventually…

There you have it — a few little things that make our basement feel more finished, more comfortable, more done. [Special thanks to Chad, my husband, for hanging both the mirror and the blind. If it weren't for him, those items would have been purchased and left leaning against a wall somewhere.]

Visit BooMama to find out how everyone else’s Before & After projects turned out. You’re sure to find more beautiful and exciting pictures there.