Trouble overriding django/grappelli base.html template

Question

According to the Django tutorial I make a templates directory under BASE_DIR, and add both an admin and an Grappelli subfolder, later copying base.html from both and putting each in its respective directory. Then I make some changes, add some CSS and JS... Reload the test server but no change is reflected at my admin interface, even the CSS/JS I add is not there!

my TEMPLATES in settings.py:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
                'django.core.context_processors.request',
            ],
        },
    },
]

i must be doing something utterly wrong, but i have no idea what and the documentation isn't helping.

ANSWER: The problem was the 'DIRS': [] only working in django 1.8+, for Django 1.7- we need to use the following:

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates'),
)

Answer 1

my settings.py

import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))
PROJECT_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__) + '/../')

TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
    'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
    'django.core.context_processors.request',
    'apps.projects.context_processors.status',
)

SITE_ID = 1

ROOT_URLCONF = 'apps.urls'

WSGI_APPLICATION = 'apps.wsgi.application'

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = PROJECT_DIR +  '/static/'
MEDIA_URL =  '/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = PROJECT_DIR + '/media/'

TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    PROJECT_DIR + '/templates/',
)