The Basement Today

Here's what the basement looks like today:

This is a picture right when you come down the stairs.  It will open up into a family room, with all the other rooms hugging the outside to the right and around the back.  You can see the skeleton of all those rooms.

For comparison, that's Miciah's old room, and will be the family room when the basement is done.  The framing of the walls sticks out to cover up the meters, etc. that you can see in the corner.  That column (and another just like it a few feet down the wall (but not represented in this picture)) will be cabinets so we can utilize as much of that dead space as possible.

This was part of the old laundry room / open space (read: wasted space).  It will be the bathroom.  You can see the plumbing for the shower and toilet.  On the right side of the bathroom wall will be the laundry room / storage space.  One the left side of the bathroom wall will be Miciah's room.

Lastly, this is looking into what used to be the toy room (from a different angle as the picture of the toy room in the last post), but what will be the boys' bedroom.  To the right of the picture you can see the center skeleton wall that will divide the boys' room from Miciah's room.

It's coming along!  I can walk down and really sense what it'll look like.  I like spending time down there watching all the work.  It's fascinating and sorta relaxing to watch.  This must be why aristocrats like watching the peasants!  Ha!  (In all seriousness, paying someone else to do this work was a fantastic decision.  This would have taken us forever, much of the work has been hyper-skilled to the point that we'd be in deep water if we'd tried it, and the contractors are all super nice.  Good decision, us!)

Pictures of the Project

As requested, here are some pictures of the basement.  I didn't want to just start on today's pictures, so here's a few pictures to give you an idea of the process and progress that's been going on.  Also, with each picture, imagine a thin layer of dust.  Everywhere.

Part 1 - Waterproofing

These guys tore out everything along the outside walls, then busted out a foot and a half of the floor's concrete all along the edges (they also dug a trench around the house on the outside), then installed drainage and stuff.

Miciah's room, in demolition mode

The toy room - guy with jackhammer working on taking out the concrete

Food storage room - guy making trench

Miciah's room - ditch and drainage

While the waterproofing guys were here, we paid them a little extra to take out all the inside walls.  It made our basement feel huge!  Then, for the 3 weeks of downtime between their work and the contractor's start, we set to work removing all of that lovely tile that you see in the above picture.  I'm sad that it's all gone, cause it was awesome!  The basement was our hobby for almost that full time.  We swept about 100 times (that's not an exaggeration.  I swear that dust procreates while you're not looking), mopped a few times, pulled up all the tile, and moved our stuff "out of the way."  Out of the way was difficult, though, because of this:

Our garage, full of scrap wood

By the end it was filled to the brim with wood and insulation.  The waterproofing guys helped us do the demolition, but didn't take all the trash away.  We had to wait for the contractors to do that part.  

Part 2 - Remodel

With all the walls removed, here's a picture of our basement at the end of the contractors working on day 3:

The torn up concrete you see is for the bathroom plumbing.  Of course, the old pipes weren't in great condition, so a bunch of them needed replaced.

And here's the dumpster full of all the crap they pulled out of our basement (and at that point, our garage):

It's been an adventure! More pictures to come.

Hello, Blog World

So, things have been both exactly the same as always AND completely wacky.  We're neck-deep in home projects and other equally large purchases, and it's insane.  Rob and I keep looking at each other and saying, "And then we'll be done, right?"  Because, honestly, this last 6 months has been a little much.

What happened is that for 10 years we had no money.  Like, none.  We sacrificed because we had to, and because we preferred it over an indulgent lifestyle funded by credit.  During that time we made do with a dying duo of cars, a home that needed attention, and multiple appliances that were nearly dead.  So when we finally had money, all those things needed taken care of.  Fast.  We didn't anticipate the fast part.

Both cars have now been replaced.  (Never mind that Rob forced our hand on the one car that we could have kept alive.  Poor Rob.  He feels pretty terrible about that.)  The van left this world with 396,615 miles.  Good job, old man.  It's weird, though, to drive around in a new-ish Outback and Cruze, when we were so used to rocking out the old car thing.

Our home has now had a new roof installed, new flooring upstairs, and all the upstairs rooms touched up.  The basement has been professionally water-proofed and is currently under renovation by another group of professionals (who are AWESOME!  Seriously, if anyone needs a project done, these contractors are amazing).  In just a few weeks we'll have 2 new bedrooms, a bathroom, and an entertainment room down there.  We're almost doubling our livable space.

We finally purchased a new washer and dryer.  If you remember, years back the dryer tried to die on us a few times.  Fortunately, we were able to eek out a few good years with it.  Now, though, the dryer is only drying our clothes about every 3rd or 4th load.  So in a few weeks a new set will show up, and we're excited that it will actually, you know, clean and dry our clothes.

We've had people make comments about all our recent purchases ("Ooh.  Rolling in money now, huh?"), and Rob and I just sigh.  This wasn't the plan, but when you spend 10 years spending no money on things that needed money spent on them,  ...  this is what happens.

I do have to giggle, though.  I turned to Rob and joked, "But, Rob, how will we prove our self-worth next year?  We'll have to buy a newer car, I think."

This whole thing has stopped being completely devastating to me.  You'd think these purchases would somehow make me happy.  But it turns out that I really don't like spending money.  Now, though, it just is what it is.  I'm excited about our new basement, for sure, and I'm happy we have the money to fund these things that really should have been taken care of years ago (with the exception of the basement renovation - that one really is just for fun, as well as to make it so we don't have to move).  So it's not all doom and gloom.

Hope you're all doing well!  I do read everyone's blog, even if I'm not writing on my own.  :)