Week 47: Basement Makeover Failure!

I don't like to admit to failure, but it's good "agile" practice to be comfortable with failure and view it as a "learning opportunity." A good number of the goals on my 60 until 60 list have been about cleaning up my basement. I've been debating about whether or not I should have it professionally finished for years. I settled on a little mixture of DIY projects along with hiring some professionals to do stuff that was too hard for me.

There's one room that had been partially finished and I went ahead and hired some contractors to put drywall in and texture the walls and ceiling.  I figured I could save some money by doing the painting myself. I bought a dark blue paint, wanting to make it dark since I'd planned to make it a 'theater room.'

Well, the whole painting project has been a disaster. The room currently looks as though some culprit came in and vandalized the room. As embarrassing as it is to post a picture, here goes:

There have been a lot of problems. First of all, I accidentally used two different colors of paint! I won't get into how this happened, but I assure you, I've been mentally saying "HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID?" every time I think about this.

Besides accidentally using two different colors, as you can see, I really had trouble with the roller getting the paint to cleanly and uniformly cover the walls. So, not only am I upset at my stupid paint color mistake, but that I don't even have the skill to paint walls. I know I can't paint pictures, but I thought I could paint walls!

Being an Agile Coach, I realize that it is inappropriate to call myself "stupid" or to mentally beat myself up about my obvious lack of home improvement skills. With more effort (and more paint), I could eventually do a better job with this. (How could it possibly be any worse?)

What did I learn? I discovered in all this, that I don't really like that color, and don't want a 'theater room.' Instead, I'm going to create a cozy 'girl cave.' So I'm going to change the color completely and (here's the important learning) hire a professional!

I had also planned to lay down "DIY" tiles:

However, I think, instead, I will also hire professionals to do the flooring in the finished room and stick to area rugs in the unfinished sections of the basement:

What worked well

• I'm glad I didn't paint the whole room or hire someone to paint the room dark blue before figuring out I didn't like that color or want a 'theater room' anyway.
• My daughter, Megan, is totally AWESOME with interior decorating and she's going to help me make my new 'girl cave' beautiful! She was so great when I told her what I mess of it I'd made and reassured me that she would help me fix everything.
• I like my new cozy area rug and that's a lot easier than laying tile!

What could have been better

• The 'finished' room currently looks terrible! (But it's all fixable!)
• The flooring is also uneven which may be a result of expansive soil. I'm kind of worried that putting flooring in may end up being an expensive endeavor.