Back in 2005 my office in the basement looked like this:

North-end

Middle

South-end

These metal racks were filled with books in plastic file boxes.  We had had a flood in the basement the year before.  Fortunately none of our books were damaged and we got the leaks repaired - by having the west and south foundations sealed, but I didn't want to risk any damage and also didn't have enough bookcases to put everything out.  I put all our books in a ReaderWare database and indicated which box they're in.

In the fall of 2005, we decided to upgrade this part of the basement (approx. 13' x 30') to house refugees from Hurricane Katrina.  We never actually got any refugees despite putting our house availability up on numerous websites, but we did improve the basement to this:

South end with new escape window

Middle

North end

We used the yellow paint because we have gallons of it left over from painting the living room (we were oversold at the paint store).  The coral paint in the north end photo is the color we have in our dining room.  The room seemed way too yellow until I put that stripe in.

It's been a over a year since we painted/carpeted/rewalled/rewindowed this space and it now looks like this:

South end

Middle

North end

It's a mess, but a more organized mess.  I've been working on getting it sorted and cleaned out on and off.  Someday I'll be done, I think.  I definitely need to find the right storage solutions to store my knitting supplies, needlepoint supplies and weaving supplies.  I also need to get more books moved back in.  Our books have been in the garage for the past year and a half.  We can still find them using the database (and a thousand or so are in bookcases on the second floor), but I'd like to be able to just see them again.

George says that in a few more years he'd like to completely gut the basement and get it set up right.  Such as right now we have a corner room with east and south facing windows which is a very poorly set-up laundry room with lots of wasted space.  We had to install our washer and dryer where the pipes and outlets were, which are on opposite sides of the room.  This would be a perfect location to set up a loom.