There’s a standard unfinished basement under the original portion of the house, but when the previous owners renovated in 1988, they added an extra basement room. (The addition room is a few feet lower than the original basement to allow for more head room.) They used it as a billiards room; we are turning it into the playroom.

Here’s what it looked like originally:

We added the heat source in the corner because the room does not have its own heating. This is a garage heater with a built-in thermostat, so it turns on automatically when it gets too cold in the room. It was the most cost-effective solution and much safer than having space-heaters within reach of the kids.

This square really puzzled us when we bought the house, but we later figured it must have been the support for a dart board. Or they just really liked the look of random squares.

This is the dart board after Andy took a sledgehammer to it. The whole left side of the room had this bench seating, covered with brown indoor/outdoor carpeting.

Here’s additional seating, with the odd little drop-off behind the door. (The two steps you can see outside the door lead to the unfinished part of the basement.)

Here’s a view of the right side of the wall after Andy removed the pool cue holders from the wall.

In its original form, this room was cold, dark, and very mustardy. We fix that.