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Basement: Month 4

You may have been thinking that since I haven’t talked about the basement lately that perhaps I’d be writing a post now to say it’s done and we love it! Alas, this is not the case.  Progress has been made, to be sure, but we are not complete.  I’m beginning to fear that day will never come.

The good news: there are walls down there.

New rec room with insulation

New Hallway and Cubbie.

Painted walls, even.

Whoa, that's a lot of paint!

And they are pretty and waiting for their floor brethren to catch up.  Slanky decided that we should attempt the floors ourselves so he’s been working here and there in the evenings to try and teach himself to lay hardwood floors.  I think it’s going much better now but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I thought on more than one occasion that one of us wasn’t going to emerge from that basement.  Ever.  Either one of us would kill the other or one of us would die of old age still working down there. I suppose either scenario is still on the table but having finished floors doesn’t seem so completely hopeless as it did on Sunday when it took 3 hours to lay 3 feet of underlayment.  That Slanky, he can learn ANYTHING from the internets and from letting my brother buy every tool imaginable that might be even slightly helpful for the job.

I’ve just realized that I don’t have many more pictures downloaded yet so more of a reveal will have to wait until the next installment.

Did you know?

that many garden hoses are made with PVC that has lead in it (and apparently the brass fittings also have lead in them)? At least this is what I’ve just been reading… And (if you’re like us and do not put your garden hoses away when the sun is shining) if garden hoses have been exposed to the sun for long amounts of time, the lead that leaches from the hose into the water leaving the hose is higher. So glad that the hose I’ve been using to water the garden for the past 2 years has never been covered or put in the shed… so much for my organic garden? Next up for today, looking for new hoses!

Progress has been made

As it turns out I haven’t been able to be at the computer as much as I’d hoped so the basement updates have not been happening.  So it goes, I guess.  BUT, things have been happening around here!!

Our backyard looks like a junk yard right now but we have new cement steps going down to where the new door will go.  The are a lot wider than the old ones and feel much safer.  Inside, our contractor is almost done with the framing and it’s been pretty exciting to see what the dimensions actually look like in 3D, especially since I’m not a very spatially visual person.   Our plumbing for down there is almost done and for the past two weeks we’ve been washing clothes in the basement and then dragging them upstairs to dry.  Not the most ideal situation but it feels like progress since something mechanical is actually working down there. And our water pressure is 10 times better all over the house.

Our old deck. Messy but in use.

No more deck!

The new oustide steps. At the top is where the old door was

Along with our new plumbing we decided to get a new toilet for the little bathroom and while the old toilet was out I realized I should commence with my dream of painting that space since no toilet in there would be a most convenient time.  Luckily, my brother is rather available these days to take on little bits of work so he painted the whole thing for me.  My only contribution was to sing kid’s songs for him when he said he required music while working. I don’t think he was impressed, but I was impressed with his work!  I have some other things to do in that room and then I’ll post pictures.

This week the electrician is here doing all of the new wiring for downstairs.  I’m also hoping he’ll be able to fix a few weird things upstairs like light switches that switch nothing on and outlets that don’t work.  Fun stuff like that.  We’ll be gone for a week and during that time our contractor will be ripping up the floor in our entry way to make the stairs.  It’s being well timed for when no children or dogs can fall through the gaping hole that will be created.  It will be a trip to come back and see the new entryway!

Basement before framing, hvac guys putting in the new furnace

Basement before framing

New bathroom

From left to right: bedroom, rec room, bedroom

New, bigger window

Separate from the basement, but everything seems to come at once around here, we got our driveway paved.  Long story short, our neighbor was paving his side and it didn’t really make sense to leave ours gravel and have a little drop-off at the property line right where you are getting in and out of cars.  It still looks a little landing-strip-like to me but I’m getting used to it.

New driveway

Jonah has not been impressed with the noise.  I’m hoping it’s a phase that all kids go through but he’s really into talking about how things are “loud” right now.  Not all things are loud and bad (he loves the vacuum cleaner right now and you can get him to vacuum with his headphones) but all things seem to be loud.  Luckily we have noise-canceling headphones for him for shows and they’ve really come in handy.  Plus, he’s gotten really into wearing them so it won’t be a hassle to get him to wear them when we see music!  Bonus!

Basement Remodel Has Begun!

Finally. Finally. Really, finally!

Today we started our basement remodel. My plan is to keep a record of the goings on here, for posterity’s sake, and I’m going to try an include some of the little details/musings that I know will get lost along the way. I’ll post some pictures of the as-is space when I remember to bring the camera upstairs but for now I’ll just start out by saying I’m a little scared about what the next two months has in store for us. The details, oh the details.  The shear noise that flows throughout the house is amazing, as if I needed any other distractions for my children to avoid sleep. They are hammering in the basement.  They are cutting duct work in the back yard.  It’s a regular construction zone here!

Luckily our days usually have activities that bring us away from home but I am worried about the nap schedule.  And the overall timeline. We have people visiting at various points at the end of summer and we’d like to have space for them to stay here with us. Oh and could we time the part where there’s a gaping hole in the floor (for my children to fall though) for when we are out of town for a week? Is that too much to hope for?

I have to admit, we’ve met some nice and interesting people along this path though.  Hardworking people with a totally different skill set than my peer group. Our heating guy could totally be on an episode of Twin Peaks (mannerisms and looks-wise) and my mom really likes him because he tells funny stories about his grandsons.  Our architect has those big piercings in his ears and at first glance he could pass for a young college guy but in reality he’s been in his field for a long time.

This weekend we made the final push towards cleaning out all of our junk and I think Slanky made 4 or 5 trips to good will, and freecycled so so many things but this morning when I looked at what is still left it feels like we still have a long way to go.

Stay tuned!