we have a basement, soon we'll have a room!

One thing I love about living in the north is that we have basements. I know that this is relatively unique to the north because I have cousins in Louisiana with crawl spaces---scary, low, dark, SilenceoftheLambs sort of thing to my Midwestern mind. 

Our basement spans the footprint of the house, which is close to a perfect square. What's been down there the past 2.5 years? Your typical laundry area, storage space, workbench, and dude-it's-1972-and-we-should-totally-put-up-faux-wood-panelling-so-it-looks-like-we-finished-this-room. 

laundry area:

workbench:

 storage space #1:

 storage space #2

 And that faux panelling, displayed with poses from our dear friends during my 30th birthday party in 2010.

Mmm-hmm.

Well, with Obie (baby #2) due in March, and with no family room on the main floor, or any floor, Mom Hawk decided it was time to help us expand. As a very generous Christmas present, she is donating her handy-gal skills to renovate the basement.

But you know what they say about renovations: twice as expensive and three times as long as you thought it would be. 

What started as:

• new carpet 
• paint the panelling & ceiling
• knock-out the "bar" area (think TheSimpson's sort of thing) and make it a kids' nook for play/reading/toys
• trash/sell the old refridgerator
• get some space heaters installed

has become:

• new carpet
• give away the old refridgerator
• rip down the majority of panelling
• paint the ceiling
• paint the one concrete brick wall
• dry wall 2 walls
• create an 8' built-in media/storage cabinet along one wall
• install permanent heating
• install new outlets and switches
• install new lighting (cans above the kids' nook & track throughout the room)
• dry wall the kids' nook
• chalkpaint a small panel wall

So here's where it stood last night. This is the view from the stairs. Notice that really cool multi-colored wall? Who thought that was ever a good idea?

 With my back to the juicy-fruit stripes:

 the soon-to-be media cabinet:

 the dry-wall wall

 the kids' nook, looking south:

kids' nook looking north. notice that scary lamp hanging down? I swear that thing was going to start some sort of fire.

And we're looking at installing new switches, outlets, and outdoor lighting (for safety) while we have the electrician here. On another note, our across-the-street neighbor will be picking up work for our electrician when he's done here. So though he's from across town, he'll be spending quite a bit of time around this neighborhood in the coming weeks.

We'll keep you updated. I'm really excited! Mom Hawk ripped down the panelling, painted the ceiling, and she'll be "mudding" the drywall sometime in the next two weeks when it is installed. Craziness.

Oh, and did I mention yet how the heating guy found we had a carbon monoxide leak? Yeah, we love this guy!

icj,

~j

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