The Basement - Finally some pictures (sort of)

So, do you remember how last Spring we redid our basement and I promised pictures eventually, but then I never posted said pictures?  Well, my sister-in-law reminded me of this and I thought I would finally try to redeem myself.

First, a short excuse explanation.  Do you remember how I nearly lost my mind while all the construction was going on?  I wrote a post about it, mainly saying how I was past the breaking point, that life was so stressful for me that I couldn't think any more and I shut down.  This created a very, very long aftermath.  Months and months and months of anger and bitterness that I felt like I didn't choose, didn't want, and yet, there it was.  Everywhere I turned, I saw remnants of my disrupted life.  The garage still a wreck, the storage room half put together, bare walls where pictures should have been, dirt in piles against my house ON TOP of beloved garden plants and spaces.  And I would feel this deep bitterness.  That's right, I'd feel anger and bitterness while looking at literal piles of dirt.

That sounds really silly, I know, and I don't claim that these feelings were rational!  I'm just saying it was there.  But now, everything is finished.  The garage is back to normal.  The gardens have finally been reclaimed.  The storage room is completely finished.  I can look around my life and instead of seeing disruption, I can see how this basement project has blessed our lives and isn't it so nice that we blah, blah, blah.  We are moving forward with our lives, instead of just having to clean up the mess of yesterday.

HENCE, I'm finally ready to post pictures.  So here we go.

(Note:  No excessive picking up was done for these pictures.  I don't do staging.  This is real life, people!  You get what you get.)

First up, the upstairs.  I know that seems unfair, but that's the first part of this project, if you can remember back that far.  We tore out a wall, revealing an archway, and that archway was our gateway drug into redoing the entire house.

Upstairs changes:
Archway!
New carpet for all the rooms
New pretend hardwood floor for the dining room
Closet torn out of the boys' room
Outlets fixed and patched up (this was a bigger ordeal than it seems)
New drywall where there used to be a doorway (too boring to explain, trust me)
New paint
Boys' room became Rob's office, complete with daybed and trundle (ready for guests!)

Living room:
Circa 2010:

That corner is where the archway is hidden.  Behind the wood paneling.

2007 shot of Elijah in front of that corner.  Not that you can tell.  But cute Elijah in a princess dress!

Living room now:

View from the archway

There's that archway in the corner!

Dining room:
We ripped up the carpet shortly after we moved in to reveal really beat up hardwood floors.  This picture makes it look not too bad, but trust me, it wasn't save-able.  I wish.  This is a shot from 2006:

Now a 2009 shot:

We were redoing the kitchen at the time, which is why I included this shot, even though it's not a great picture of the floor.  Also, the kids!  They were so little!  :)

And the dining room now:

The floor is a richer color, not so bright.  And the setup of the room is better, too.  Allows for flow (cause the room has to double as a hallway to the kitchen / downstairs) and seating.  Someday I'll figure out a good way to get rid of the huge China hutch (though I do love it) and get us 6 inches of space back.  That'll be great.

The boys' room / the kids' room / Rob's office:

That was right after we painted it.  You can see the closet that is flush with the door.  We ripped that out to give the room another 3 feet.

Interim shots, with all 3 kids sleeping in this room while the downstairs was being completed can be found in this blog post.

Rob's office now:

Another 3 feet of space for Rob to clutter up.  But when it really starts to bug me I just shut the door.  :)  Him having his own office is GENIUS.  If we couldn't have made it work in this house, we would have moved already.

So there you go, that's the changes in the upstairs.  Of course, I didn't include the kitchen, since I covered that extensively in other blog posts of ancient date, and this was really to show the changes since 2013.  Also, we did all of the upstairs ourselves.  So even the mistakes are adorable.  :)

Downstairs pictures to come.  I have now actually found the Before pictures that I knew existed, so the rest of this process will go much faster for me.  I organize my pictures by date, so I had to comb through years worth of pictures to find them!  Now that they've been located, full steam ahead!