The Basement Overhaul: Chapter 2

The last time I blogged about the basement was two years and eight months ago. In that post I showed you the basement all torn up, and in this post about the laundry room, I showed you a sneak peek of the bathroom framing. Then I said something really funny:

"I’ll keep updating you as we make progress."

Again, that was almost three years ago. :-) We got to the point where we hated (and I do mean HATED) working on the basement. We were arguing every time we worked on it, overwhelmed by the amount of projects and work that needed to be done, and just plain old sick and tired of working down in the cement dungeon. When we bought our house we vowed to never let it become the priority in our lives, or dictate our actions. So we called a timeout and agreed to shelf the basement project until we could stand to talk about it again.

Tempers cooled, time went by, and we revisited the idea of finishing the basement. At that point we had torn out all of the existing finished parts of the basement, with the exception of the kitchen. It no longer looked like this, thank the Lord.



We agreed at that point that we needed to save up the funds to have the pros come in and finish framing and drywalling for us. In our estimation, if we tried to do it ourselves, it would take us approximately 5,837 years.

So for the next year or so, we saved our pennies. We agreed on the amount of money we would spend on "outsourcing" and shopped around for a contractor that came well recommended and was within our price range. We found a great guy, talked over the plans with him a million times, and finally had him start work in July.

I'm going to take a few posts to show the amount of work Pat and his guys accomplished in just three weeks. It was nothing short of amazing. But before that, here's where things stood before they got to work.

The stairwell down, clad in paneling



The stairs themselves, freaky and creaky



The view directly across from the bottom of the stairs

To the right



The laundry area



The bathroom



To the left of the stairs



And what we're calling the "nook"



Although it looks pretty scary, we had actually accomplished a lot at this point:

• Demolition, and LOTS of it.


• Supports for the stairs


• Framing for the bathroom


• Reworking of some ductwork, and adding a duct for the bath/living areas


• Electrical to the laundry and bathroom areas (with the exception of the shower)


• Plumbing for the laundry and bathroom, including building a platform and installing a pump for the shower


• Installing a new toilet and sink/faucet


• Replacing the water heater


• Having our window guy replace the other two glass block windows


• Cable guy ran new internet connection


• Removed all of the nasty vinyl tile stuck to the cement floor.

That's where things stood when the contractors began. Next up, drylok and framing!

Grateful Banner

You guys, I made a craft! Made it, hung it up and I'm blogging about it in a timely manner! I gave myself an imaginary gold star. :-) On a side note, wouldn't it be amazing if life handed out gold stars the way school did? I'm just sayin. :-) Okay, here's what I made.



Bam. A grateful banner. I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. I wanted to decorate a little bit for fall, nothing too crazy but just a little touch. God's been teaching me for a couple of years now the amazing plethora of things I have to be grateful for, and man is it awesome and humbling. As my friend Jenna says, an embarrassment of riches is what I have, friends. Here's how the whole fireplace/mantel area is looking.



I made the banner during a naptime - I painted randomly all over a sheet of watercolor paper, let it dry, and then cut the leaves out of that. Then I used watercolor pencils to draw my letters, filled them in and then painted over them to give them that watercolor effect. I love watercolor pencils. Also, I finished this part after Monster woke up, and he may or may not have eaten a few of my pencils. Oops.



Then, it was hole punching and stringing time (I used simple baker's twine). The whole thing was light enough to hang with scotch tape, but you could also drive some very small nails into the top of the mantel to hang the banner from. A cool mosaic frame from Pier 1 that I added a mirror to and my ceramic pumpkins round out the mantel. Oh, and my fall candle of course! :-)



So there you have it. A fast and easy craft that reminds me to reflect on all of the things I am blessed with in my life. I'm linking this up to Kim's Dare to DIY party. I have no idea if I'll finish every week, but I made it for this partay! :-)

RiverWalk

Our town has a river that slices the whole city in half and lets out into the lake. There is a 15 mile riverwalk that we decided to check out one quiet Sunday evening in September. We saw tons of birds, herons, ducks, turtles, and a beaver. It was a lot of fun!













Javi decided to try out the taste of leaves, he wasn't thrilled.



 

At the end of our walk (not the end of the riverwalk though!) we came across this funny little boater's community. People had sheds, neon lights, customized signs... it was the funniest thing.



Such a fun evening, and some great fresh air and exercise too! :-)