Progress, finally.

Oh boy, has this basement project taken forever!  The funny thing about it is that when we actually focus and just work on it, we can move along pretty quickly.  Unfortunately, we go for months at a time with no ambition for working on it.  We are currently at a point where we just are so sick of having this hanging over our heads and so ready to have the house on the market and so sick of drywall pieces all over the place and sick of not QUITE having a guest room, etc etc that we are just completely motivated to get. it. done.

So yesterday we devoted our entire day to it.  Since it is Memorial Day weekend the kids didn't have soccer games and there was nothing else scheduled to take our time.  It was just the kind of Saturday we needed.  We started at about 9:30 am and by 2:00, we were done hanging drywall.  We went out to lunch (and ice cream!) together to celebrate, then came home and started on the next stage: Cutting the metal corner beading, setting screws that didn't get set the first time around, and mudding and taping.  We are hoping to have the mudding and taping done by next Saturday. 

After that is done, we'll prime and paint, get carpet installed, and get the trim in.  We're also going to try our hand at staining concrete.  We really like the look of it so rather than put tile in the hallway, we thought we'd give that a try.  We will also be pulling out some of the carpet in the family room.  We want to remove the carpet from in front of the door and under the table .  That will get stain and an area rug. 


 In the picture below, the area to the right of the closet will be a utility closet.  It has the wiring for the cable and Dish (which we don't have hooked up) and other such stuff.

So basically, this month will be crazy busy.  But then, aren't they all? 

The Next Basement Room

We've been finishing our basement for almost 2 years now. Two years ago in March, I started work on the first room. We really needed another bedroom. Lincoln was gone for a few days for work, so I enlisted the help of my cousin and her handy husband and we began construction. In anticipation of the start of the project, I had been saving some cash to put toward materials. I had something like $200 or $300. Not a lot of money, but when you do the work yourself (or have your handy cousin-in-law do it), it's just the cost of materials. I was able to get the 2x4s for framing the walls, electrical supplies, drywall, nails for the nail gun (which I think was my greatest cost!), screws for the drywall, and a building permit. It's been two years, there may have been more. So about a year later, we had the first room complete. (Actually, we still don't have closet doors in, the outlet spacers in, and a couple pieces of trim up.)

Next we focused on closing off the hallway, so the girls wouldn't feel like they were sleeping out in the unfinished basement. We've been plugging away at that, very slowly.




Along the way, we also began some work on the next bedroom. We had my cousin-in-law come over and frame up a closet for us.


A few months later, Lincoln put a heat run in.


When my parents came to visit over the summer, we hung the drywall ceiling. This got us excited and motivated. We thought.

Work halted for a while, and then this past fall we hired a friend to come put in another window in the room. One of the concerns about this room was that there was not enough square inches of window compared to square footage of the room for it to pass code as a bedroom. We really wanted to be able to sell this home as a 5 bedroom someday and we had a new construction window sitting in our basement, (apparently left over from construction of the home- it's been here since we bought the house), so we decided to install it. Installing a window was a bit intimidating for us. It's not hard, but it is precise.


The window looks out on our garden. Our garden that is a frozen tundra currently.


This winter we began work on drywalling the walls. We switched our focus to the hallway again, hoping to close off the unheated part of the basement with winter upon us.


We have insulated the wall in the unheated portion of the basement and our door we ordered is in and just waiting for us to pick it up and install it. Once that is in, we will return to this room. I am SO excited to get this done!

Updates and a Sneak Peek

Remember I said I would have some great after pictures for you? Well, let's start in the basement. I spent the morning cleaning and organizing and moving stuff around. Although it is still a lot of stuff, I did haul out a couple bags of clothes to go to Goodwill, along with a few other items. I went through the kids' clothes that were in storage and pulled out lots of things they can be wearing now. I finally got all the Christmas stuff consolidated and packed away properly. I also consolidated Kennedy's stuff down into a laundry basket. I put all the building supplies in one corner and, the best part, cleared the pathway to my food storage and freezer.

(You are seeing the backs of our Christmas caroler decorations. I finally brought them in since we were experiencing a heat wave. I have to store them with their backs to the door so they don't creep the kids out. I must admit, it can be a bit unnerving to walk into the basement, flick on the light, and see four people staring at you.)







Last night Lincoln and I (mostly Lincoln) got the entire wall insulated. Now we're just waiting on that door order to process so we can close this section off.

Another after picture I took was of the weather. Remember the day I took Jesse to the park?


24 hours later it looked like this around here:


I'm not complaining. It IS January, after all.

Today (like most days, honestly) my bed is unmade and piled with laundry. I just walked in to find the dog there:


That's her idea of a great way to spend a winter's day.

The other project I have been working on is something I'm pretty excited about: A face lift for our dining area. This has been in the works for a while. Back in the fall when I painted the trim, I painted the bottom portion of the walls in the dining area in the same white, intending to install chair rail. Considering our open floor plan, I thought the chair rail would be nice to kind of set the dining area apart. The thing that has held the process up was choosing a paint color for the top portion of the wall. I finally took the plunge with the Glidden color, Polished Limestone. I LOVE it! It is light and bright during the day, a little more warm at night. It is similar in tone to the other grays in the house, but leans a little toward green. I painted yesterday and today I am cutting chair rail. Unfortunately I need one more piece of chair rail, so this project probably won't be done today. But as promised, a sneak peek!

Scary Basement Pictures

I worked hard this morning. Our never ending basement project has come to a point where we are thisclose to having the unfinished portion closed off from the rest of the basement. We have ordered a prehung door for the doorway, and yesterday I picked up some insulation. We plan to insulate the entire interior wall between the unfinished basement and the finished portion. Not only will it help keep things warmer, but it will also help keep the noise from the furnace and the water softener down a bit.

My project today was to clear, clean, and organize the storage space so that we can get to the wall to hang insulation. I know I can't possibly be the only one with a dumping ground, right? Right? Let me lay it out for you. Clothes. Lots of clothes. Furniture. Furniture that is waiting to be used, furniture that is junk but I have no way to get rid of until junk day. Patio furniture being stored for the winter. Building materials. Holiday decoration bins completely unorganized. Lots of stuff from Kennedy's room, waiting for her new room to be completed. And I'm not gonna lie. An occasional dog turd here or there. She's mostly house trained, but from time to time she will sneak down there and poo. It seems like there is always another dried out nugget showing up down there. Hopefully a door will put a stop to her secret potty habits.


Anyhooooooo...




So when things have to go to storage, and especially if I send them down with the kids, they usually just get chucked in here. It was really out of control. So I moved stuff around, consolidated, organized, swept, threw stuff away, picked up dog poo nuggets, etc.


Around noon I stopped to have lunch. I took the dog out to go potty and discovered that the weather was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was warm and the breeze was minimal. I decided the basement could wait. After lunch Jesse and I went to the park to soak up some sunshine and get some fresh air in our lungs. Before we left I opened some windows so the house could get fresh air in its lungs as well. We were lucky that some of our friends were there too. Jesse ran around and I parked my BEhind in the SUNshine.

January in Wisconsin?! What?



The tree I was sitting under had huge buds on it- in January. That can't be good.


So I've decided that tonight I'm only posting before pictures, because I think I'm going to get some great afters tomorrow.

The Walls Are Closing In...

Finally, FINALLY, we found some time to work on the hallway in the basement. Yesterday afternoon we decided it was high time we got to work in there. For the first time in weeks, we didn't have anything else going on to take up our Saturday. The kids classes at Lands' End had finished up for the session and we hadn't signed them up for anything else. We spent the morning cleaning the house, then Lincoln and I got to it. We had been dreading trying to hang the ceiling with just the two of us, but we managed just fine. The first two pieces went up pretty easily, but the last ceiling piece threw us off. We have to remove the hardwired smoke detector in order to hang the drywall, and we can't figure out how to take it down. Anybody know? We couldn't find the breaker switch, and hated to flip the main breaker. It looks like the wires should just unplug from the unit, but the connection seems impossible to pull apart. Any ideas?



Since we were stumped, we stopped with the ceiling and decided to hang walls where we had already installed the ceiling drywall.


We got four pieces up and Wow! what a difference!


It makes the basement seem huge with that continuous wall and ceiling. And it makes us excited to get the other bedroom and the bathroom done. It will add sooo much space!


For now, I hope to be able to show you all the drywall up in the hallway by the end of the week. My other goal for the week is to get the caulking done in the girls' room. That should keep me busy! Here's hoping we all have a productive week! What's on your plate this week?

Basement Progress

Basement progress might be overstating what we have done of late in the area. But progress is progress, no matter how small...Right? We NEED to get the hallway in this area finished off. As part of that process, we planned to rip out the doorway to the unfinished portion, opening it up without an archway or anything, just a continuation of the wall and ceiling, one smooth line. Well, one smooth line with a soffit in the middle of it.

A few days after Christmas, Lincoln got to work with a Saws All and a crowbar, and tore out the doorway.
I couldn't believe how much bigger it made the family room space look! It will be amazing when we get it finished. And warmer. A lot of cold air comes in from the unfinished basement. Right now, getting drywall up in the hallway is top priority. If we can get the ceiling up, I can plug away at the walls on my own.

There are so many projects I want to get working on, but this is where our money and efforts need to be concentrated right now. I'm hoping we can get to it on Saturday. We shall see.

Progress at a Snail's Pace...

The basement project is progressing, just very slowly at this point. We decided we would frame the bathroom and the next bedroom and install the electrical in both, before we proceeded with the drywall in the first bedroom. We needed to have the inspector come out to look at some changes to the electrical and we figured, why not have all the electrical done so he could make just one more inspection. This seemed simple enough, considering how quickly we banged out that first room. However, a few factors are now coming into play that weren't before. First of all, I had squirreled away some funds for the start of the project. Now we have to have some time to squirrel away some more. Next, now that Lincoln is here and participating, we need to work around his schedule as well. He and I want to learn as we go so we can do this ourselves at some point. And lastly, we have a plumbing question that needs to be answered before we can build the next wall.

But here is what we have accomplished in the past week or two.

More electrical work in the first bedroom and hallway. The proper outlets have been installed. The first ones we put in did not meet a brand new code. They must now be the tamper resistant kind. Doug also put in a light fixture in the new hallway and wired for the other two. These will eventually be recessed lights.

Our friend, Jesse, came and put two new circuits in the box to accommodate the bathroom and the second bedroom.



Lincoln and I put in a heat run to the first bedroom and consulted with our friend Spencer to determine what our plan for cold air returns should be.


We have picked up the building materials we need for framing the next two rooms. Hopefully I can get a plumber out here today to answer our question and give us an estimate on future plumbing work. Once that is done we can proceed with framing.

In the meantime, maybe I'll start working on my kitchen backsplash today...

While The Cat's Away...

Lincoln recently had to travel to Boston for a few days for work. While I was sad to see him go, I was excited to start working on a project while he was gone to surprise him.
I hatched my plan a couple weeks ahead of time. I started squirreling money away and looking for accomplices to aid me in my scheme. Once I had my cousin, Karen, and her husband Jamie on board, I started to get really excited. My plan? To build a room in the unfinished basement.
I knew we wouldn't be able to complete it in the three days, but i figured it would be pretty fun to at least get it framed up.
Karen and Jamie came by a few days before Lincoln left and the three of us laid out our plan. With Jamie's professional, or at least, experience-based advice, we decided which room to start on and came up with a materials list. Lincoln left on Sunday, and Monday morning Jamie and I went to the home improvement store to pick up all the materials. On the way back into town, we stopped at the town hall and I acquired our building permit.
We returned home and unloaded the truck, with the assistance of Karen and our friend Billy. Jamie has some severe physical limitations due to a serious work injury a few years back, so we determined that we had accomplished enough for day one. That evening, our friend Doug came by to assess whether he felt he could do the electrical for us or not. He was sure he could and told me to let him know when we were ready for him.
On day 2, Jamie, with a little assistance from Karen and I, framed up the room almost in its entirety. I called Doug and told him we were ready and he came by that evening and put in all the electrical.
On day 3, the building inspector came to check the electrical. He determined we needed to change a couple things, but overall was pleased. Karen and Jamie came in the morning and framed up the closet.
Lincoln arrived home late that night and was surprised to see a building permit in our window, but not nearly as surprised as when he saw a room taking shape in the basement.
On day 4, yesterday, Jamie came over to put in a few nailers. Doug and the building inspector came at noon to talk through the electrical plans.
Tonight we will pick up what we need to tap into our HVAC and run heat and a cold air return. Hopefully that will go in tomorrow morning, then we can move on to drywall.
I'm looking forward to documenting our progress on this blog. This is soooo fun! OH! And the best news is that the window I thought was too small to meet code for a bedroom, isn't. So we can OFFICIALLY call it a fourth bedroom! Hurray!
(This is what the basement looked like when we first looked at the house.)


The rest of the pictures are of the new room.


(As you can see, unlike the previous fitness- and cleanliness-minded homeowners, we use the space as a dumping ground for dead furniture.)