Finish trim on the basement stair landing

I finally got around to installing quarter round on landing on the basement stairs.  It looks much more finished now.  The quarter round is pine stained to match the stairs.

Basement landing with quarter round

Hiding the litter boxes

 

We have three cats and their litter boxes are in the basement.  One of the first basement renovation tasks we undertook was to enclose the litter boxes to keep them out of sight and keep the dust contained.

I considered a number of alternatives, but couldn’t find the right placement that didn’t waste space.  Finally I realized that I could build a small closet adjacent to the stair well. 

I created a small door for the cats from the stairwell.  A large double door is accessible from the storage room for cleaning (and hiding).    Future owners without pets could easily close the stairwell opening and use this as a storage closet.

Cat litter box closet

Doors hiding litter boxes

Kitchen and lighting updates

The last few weekends the basement project has been a lower priority than enjoying the home theater and pool table!  None the less a few small things did move forward.

The cabinet pulls finally came in after over a month of waiting.  I bought a plastic template to make the install easier, but the holes in the template didn’t align with the hardware.  I drilled holes in the template to match my pulls and the rest went pretty quickly once I overcame my fear of drilling into the new cabinets!

Lighting is now finished, yeah!  The lighting punch list included sconces for the home theater, a light for over the pool table, rope lighting for the top of the kitchen cabinets, and pendants over the bar.  The sconces and the pendants went in easily.  Getting the pool table light to hang level and the globes to align took a bit of persuasion.    I spent a couple of hours on this and it was pretty frustrating at times.  I had to gently bend the light fixture to get the globes to align nicely.

Rope lighting on top of the cabinets was pretty straightforward as I installed switched outlets during construction.   The only tricky part was that the cabinets have crown molding, which made installing the clips for the rope light difficult.  I gave up on the screws and used construction adhesive to attach the clips.  I let it dry for a few hours and it worked fine.