While part of our crew was working on other aspects of our project such as those we've already covered, other members of our team have been hard at work as well, putting together custom cabinets (cabinets aren't just for the kitchen, you know!). These cabinets have been finished to compliment the woodgrain paneling the homeowner has chosen for the new basement office/rec space, and will be incorporated directly into the design of the new room, as apparently inseparable from it as, well, your cabinets are from your kitchen.

With the cabinets built and the appropriate wall space ready to receive them, our custom cabinets are installed and a top is fitted for them. Once it's all together, it will be hard to imagine that our cabinets were ever separate from the wall! We've also started to put some moulding around the door frames for two of our closets, one of which is concealing a basement plumbing fixture with valves that need to be readily accessible. Above, you can see some of the prep work that's been done for what will soon become a suspended tile ceiling. The joist cavities have been insulated and the preparations for finished overhead fluorescent lighting have been made.

Once the suspended acoustical tile ceiling is in place, it starts to get very easy to forget that just a short time ago, this was an empty corner of a basement. Translucent panels have been placed under the fluorescent lights to help finish off the effect. With the ceiling in place, we can devote more of our attention to finishing the closet interiors. The one on the far right is definitely a large walk-in and will have its own lighting, and will have rails installed on either side for hanging clothes or whatever else is required (with very little effort, this office/den is ready for action as a spare bedroom, family room, rec area, whatever; a little adaptability goes a long way).

As we mentioned before, one of our closets is concealing a floor to ceiling plumbing fixture with valves that must remain readily accessible. However, we've measured our closet so that the pipe proves to be as little of an inconvenience as possible. Our floor plan puts the pipe at the left side of the closet with the valves facing toward the center for the easiest possible reach. Since the pipe is off to the side, we still have plenty of useful storage space in this closet, which we've maximized by putting in triangular corner type shelves to get the most out of our small closet.

With all of the interior closet work, shelving and cabinet installations complete, and with the doors mounted and the carpets installed, we end up with a finished room, ready for use as an office, den, bedroom, family room, rec room... well, you get the idea. Only the barely noticeable half window at the top of one wall betrays the fact that this is actually a basement! We've come a very long way from where we started, having turned the plain, empty space with cold block walls and concrete floors into this heated, very livable space.