Sooooo Close

The project is getting much closer to being finished.  The team has been a little sidetracked as of late because Dad and John have been "redeployed" to different projects.  You see, our church project is still ongoing (must...resist...next...comment, let's just say it rhymes with "Hi old shoe foe"), and Dad's been helping to build a storage shed while John's been dividing his time between work, church counsel, many aspects of the church building project, Crimestoppers, friends' weddings and attending a few Brewers Games because he wanted to see them clinch the Central Division (which, with the help of MY Cubbies, he did get to see on Friday night).  My schedule wasn't exactly conducive to helping as of late either, since we were approaching one of the biggest tax deadlines of the year (9/15 is the deadline for extended corporate tax returns). 

That said, things have kept on moving, just slowly.  The ceiling grid is in, along with most of the panels, and the rest of the panels should be in by the end of the week.  The can lights and ceiling fan are also in place.

 

With any luck, the carpeting will be installed on Thursday and when I get home Thursday night or Friday evening, I'll be able to move the furniture into place.  The couch and recliner were delivered two weeks ago (usually, it would be exciting to get furniture 2-3 weeks early, but I really would have been okay waiting).  Since then, it has been patiently waiting under sheets as the construction goes on around it. 

Since the furniture is here anyway, and the ceiling is now almost complete, Mom and I took some time this weekend to assemble the shelving unit that I got for my birthday back in March.  I think we did a pretty good job, and we did it without injury or curse word.  Woot! 

As for the bathroom, there was some progress there as well.  I was in Chicago for work last week, and when I came home Thursday night, I had a surprise waiting for me.  John had finished tiling (including grouting) the bathroom floor.  I know it wasn't an easy job, because the floor in the basement is not even, and I think he did a terriffic job.  In a typical year, I help John with his taxes in return for him being my handyman.  This year he went above and beyond the call of duty, so I need to get him something cool.  How much do you want to bet he'll want me to get him something Brewers oriented, just because he knows it'll KILL me to buy it. 

Once the ceiling is done in the Rec Room, we'll move on to the bathroom ceiling.  Oh, and if any of the P/P/D's I work for are reading this blog, I think it would be a GREAT idea for me to be on the road when this happens early next week, it's a much smaller area than the rec room, requiring a lot more cutting (and probably related cussing).  It may prevent WWIII from breaking out, just saying...

Cuddles is about ready for the project to end.  He doesn't like the constant visitors, and all of this new stuff is coming with new rules.  You may have noticed the white box-like thing on the left corner of the couch.  Yeah, that's a motion alarm that emits a high-pitched squeal when there's movement.  Seems a certain feline thinks that since this furniture is in the basement it's fair game for him to sleep on.  Unfortunately for him, both at my house and at my parents, he is not allowed on any furniture other than my bed and that rule extends to the Rec Room.  He behaves well upstairs, but the dark furniture shows his kitty-litter-dust paw prints and is a dead giveaway that he's been where he shouldn't be.  So from now on, the door stays shut when I'm not in the room.  Don't worry folks, he still has plenty of room to roam upstairs.

A Change in Appearance

I know I haven't updated lately, but we had some things going on at home that slightly derailed the remodel process.  I won't go into details here, but suffice it to say any future home changes (i.e. remodels and/or new purchases) will NOT be in process when my mom has her yearly doctors' check-ups.

The first change is in the bathroom, where the electrical is complete, the light is installed (although we're waiting until after the ceiling is installed to put the light covers on) and the vanity is set in place.

The Rec Room area has changed a lot since my last blog.  Four gallons of primer, three gallons of off-white, and three gallons of the faux finish later (oh, yeah, along with 4 more trips to the home improvement store to pick up "one more gallon" of paint), the painting was completed.  The laminate floor, which was given to me by my parents' most generous and awesome neighbors when it was removed from their house, has been installed in the bar area.  The doorknob on the bathroom door was replaced with a locking model, and the old doorknob has been repurposed for the closet door. 



Of course we still have a ways to go.  The tile floor needs to be laid, and the countertop, sink and toilet need installing in the bathroom (the final plumbing for that depends on me clearing a path in the disaster, oops, storage room so that the plumber can hook up the water).  We also need to get the ceiling measured so that my Dad can get that installed before the carpeting comes.  I've picked out my carpeting, and the guy will come on Wednesday to measure.  From there, it's about a week and a half for them to order it.  Then, the room will be ready for furniture deliveries.  The sofa and chair should be here in about three weeks, and I can pick up my coffee table at any time.  There will be future additions, including building a bar and decorating the walls, but by the end of September, for all intents and purposes, I should be able to call the rooms "done."

There is one individual who hasn't exactly approved of the remodel.  Cuddles isn't exactly excited about strangers or noise, so he hung out by Mom and Dad's house when the project started.  When he came home, and he suddenly couldn't travel through the walls anymore, he wasn't exactly keen on the whole thing, and he let me know it.  His curiosity does get the best of him, and he does daily inspections to see what has changed, but he doesn't seem to anxious to spend any real time downstairs.  Hopefully, once everything is in place, he'll realize it's not such a bad place to hang out.

There has been one casualty so far in the project.  The little stepladder I bought when I moved into the house to help me reach things in the upper cabinets and the shelves of my walk-in closet is now permanently covered in primer, paint and other construction materials and will be relegated for use in the garden and the garage. 



I will try to be more diligent in my updates, if my schedule permits.

And The Winning Color Is...

Green (tho I'm guessing those of you who've seen my place aren't shocked).

Mom and I painted the bathroom tonight with a shade called Mother Earth, it's hard to tell in the snapshot below, but it's kind of a mossy green color.

We did discover that we're going to need more paint for the Rec room than I originally anticipated.  Dad got about 3/4 of the primer sprayed in that room, and he'll finish that up tomorrow morning, while we make another run to the home improvement store.  I'm going to try a technique painting for the rec room called Bellagio Faux, which has an under coat and a top coat with some texture.  We only picked up a gallon of each paint, and I think we're going to need more like 3 gallons of each, oops (should have gone with the gut on that one I guess).  The undercoat is an off-white color, and the top coat is green.  I'm looking forward to when I get that done, but am guessing that's going to probably take a while.

Stay tuned for more updates :-)

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions. ~Brendan Francis

Okay, I'm going to put this out there right away. When it comes to non-work related topics, I am NOT good at making decisions, and try to defer to others when possible. I don't struggle with what direction to take a work-related project, and am confident in the decisions that I make for clients and my team, but somehow that confidence gets left at the door (or, perhaps at the keyboard) when I switch from work-mode to personal mode.

Personal decisions are something I try to avoid. When it was time to go to college, I briefly debated one other school before choosing Lakeland, but I didn't want to have to choose. So, I only filled out one college application, and only put one school down to receive my ACT scores and FAFSA information. In all fairness, my entire family is rather indecisive. Choosing where to go for lunch on a Saturday while shopping has sometimes taken my mom and I more than an hour, back and forth saying "You pick, no you pick." When my mom wants to paint, she brings home paint charts with about 25 different shades of white, and looks at them for WEEKS before selecting "just that right shade."

On occasion, I can make a quick decision on something. Ironically, the bigger and more permanent the decision, the quicker it seems to come for me. Case in point, when I was looking to buy a place 6 years ago, I went to two open houses, then saw a family friend outside of her new condo. When I walked in, I knew that's what I wanted, and in less than 72 hours I had secured financing and placed an offer on my home.

Don't misunderstand me, I do have ideas for what I want, but when faced with CHOOSING something that I hadn't already predetermined, it's ugly. When I put in the offer on my condo, I knew which of the two layouts I wanted (it was rather simple, I didn't want a shared driveway for two reasons: (1) I was afraid that my neighbors would park on my half of the driveway when I was out of town, and when I came home I couldn't get into my garage and (2) there are a handful of people I know who I could see not using common sense and parking on the neighbor's half of the driveway, thus creating the same problem for them that I wanted to avoid. I also knew that I did not want yellow siding; I wanted oak woodwork; I absolutely did NOT want that frieze carpet, as I could only imagine how that would collect cat fur; I didn't want brass doobs or cabinet pulls; and I didn't want any wall sconces. Fortunately, because I put an offer in on a completed place, the contracter made the decisions on anything I didn't have an opinion on.

Unfortunately, when I jumped into this remodel, I wasn't prepared for all of the choices I was going to have to make. I don't mean the furniture, like when I initially furnished the condo, I had an idea of what I wanted, and both times I just knew when I'd found the right pieces. In the beginning, some things made my decisions easier. Picking a sink was easy - I wanted to stick with the same manufacturer that I had for my upstairs plumbing, and if I didn't want to special order the home improvement store only had two styles - oval and rectangular. Picking a cabinet was pretty easy, since I knew I wanted something to compliment what I had upstairs. So, I wasn't fully prepared for tonight's shopping excursion.

When I was done with work for the day, my mom and I went to a local flooring store. YIKES, not only did I have to pick the style of carpet (still didn't want Frieze, but did I want plush or burbur, patterned or plain, what color). Making that decision took a while, but I am pretty sure I have an idea. Once the laminate is laid in the bar area, I'll bring a sample home and make my final decision. Next, we headed down to the home improvement store to pick up the primer/sealer for the drywall so Dad could spray that tomorrow. Next up in the process is painting both rooms. Initially, I thought that I had things picked out, but I like the texture on the walls so much I've decided not to do the Venitian Plaster in the bathroom.

As for the rec room, I know I want to do a specific style of painting, but the colors are still up in the air. So, instead of bringing home paint, I brought home lots and lots of paint samples (at least they're not all white). I have been staring at these for the past hour and a half and am no closer to making a decision than when I started.

For a variety of reasons, I need to get the painting done this weekend, preferably finishing the bathroom after work, leaving Saturday for the rec room itself, so I need to decide rather quickly. Some of the folks I work with have a joke that stems from long ago. When we find ourselves trying to troubleshoot something, we'll go wash our hands and hope for an Epiphany on what to do (ironically, it does seem to work most of the time - probably because we stop focusing so hard on the issue at hand). So, I'm going to go to bed, and hopefully when I get up in the morning, I'll wash my hands and the color choices will just come to me. If not, then in the next set of pictures I post, expect to see everything painted white.

From Basement to Rec Room at Breakneck Speed

I haven't blogged lately for a variety of reasons, but primarily because my basement remodel had gone absolutely nowhere. When you combine my schedule with my Dad's (who, like me, never knows what his schedule's like in advance) and my brother's (who, in addition to his day job serves on the church counsel, the church building committe - which has seen it's own remodeling project go ahead in the past month or so, the Plan Commission and Crimestoppers...whew, when DOES that boy sleep), it's been a challenge.

The thing is, I have plans for using the basement this year, and at the top of the list of which is when Santa and his crew come to visit all of my friends kiddos. An ever increasing population of kids really would fit in better in a rec room than in my living room with all the dangers that come along with my glass tables, glass entertainment center, open stairway, etc. Plus, I have other reasons for wanting the basement done. Not the least of which is, at some point yet this year, we are probably going to get severe weather while I'm home, and I'd rather sleep on a couch than on a piece of scrap carpet on the floor - more on this in a future post.

So, three weeks ago this past Saturday I picked up the pieces needed to add another drop for my central vac unit, since otherwise I couldn't clean downstairs. The pieces sat there for two weeks while Dad worked and JT was occupied with about 50 other things on his To Do List, as well as a weekend getaway for a friends "Bachelor Party." Finally, my mother had had enough, and pretty much told the guys if they didn't get the vaccuum piece in, she and I would do it.

A week ago yesterday Dad brought his good friend over and he helped calculate exactly how much wood we would need to stud the outside walls. That night, the vaccuum piece went in. Tuesday, Dad got the wood, and he and Mom carried it into the basement that night. By the time I got home Thursday night, the studs were in, and they'd started the electrical. WOW!!!

Of course, with things suddenly moving at the speed of a Category 5 hurricane, I kept myself busy this weekend. Friday after work was Trip 1 of the weekend to the Home Improvement Store to pick up lighting fixtures, cable and boxes for the TV connections, faucent for the sink (no room for the actual sink in this run) and return a couple of things that we didn't need after all. Saturday brought Trip 2 to the Home Improvement store, on my list this time: Vanity, Sink, and some other odds and ends stuff. Then, it was on to the furniture store to "look" at furniture. An hour later, I had ordered a couch and a rocker recliner. Sunday afternoon brought Trip 3 to the Home Improvement store, this time we picked up the toilet, the countertop, and tile for the bathroom floor. We were going to buy paint too, but ended up going home without that, but with questions for the Drywaller. My spare bedroom/home office is currently serving a third purpose, as holding area for all of my purchases.

Things haven't slowed down this week, yesterday the Drywaller was here and put up the sheetrock in both rooms. Last night, the plumber got all of the connections set up. Today the drywaller did all of the taping, and tomorrow he's going to start spraying on the finish, if everything dries. I have a day trip to Baltimore tomorrow, so it'll be exciting to see how much things have progressed when I get home tomorrow night. They figure by Friday they'll be ready for the primer.

So, here's what should be left by the end of the week:

Buy and install ceiling kit
Buy and install the can lights in the rec room
Install the wood laminate floor in the "bar" area
Buy the Venitian Plaster kit to paint the bathroom and paint (*)
Buy the paint and paint the rec room (two colors - rag painting) (*)
Install the tile flooring in the bathroom (*)
Install the bathroom light
Install the bathroom vanity, sink, and toilet
Find a carpet square pattern I like (at a reasonable price) and install that in the rec room. (*)
Put on the wood trim

To some, that may look like a long list, but given how fast the rest of this project has moved, I have high hopes that this will be done by mid-September. That is, of course, if I can get all of the items with an asterisk at the end done...those are things that require my involvement, and given the fact that my family, friends, and my family's friends have pulled up their bootstraps, I really can't be the holdup now, can I?

Note to self: Put "Request PTO" on the "To Do List"

Oh, and in case you were wondering if I got everything cleared out of these two rooms, the answer is yes (with the help of the parental units)....just don't pay attention to the clutter behind the curtain (or, in the storage room).

Yard Work

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I took a break from cleaning the basement and did some work outside. I've been in my condo a little over five years now, and have never really been successful in getting the grass to grow on the West side of my patio, so I decided to rip out what was there and turn that area into another perennial bed.

After calling Diggers Hotline earlier in the week to make sure I wasn't near any buried utilities (even though I was 99.9% certain there weren't), I woke up early Saturday morning, grabbed my handy Maddock and started digging up the area and, with the help of my mom, we worked it up as well as we could. We also found out why the grass didn't grow well...seems that, like most masons, the guys who put my patio in were a bit sloppy, and buried the extra cement about an inch under ground...deep enough to hide, but not deep enough to let the grass roots take hold. Saturday night, Dad brought over the rototiller and we (yes, we...he actually let me use power tools - probably because it was actually my brother's) tilled the area, and by Sunday we were planting the grasses and flowers I'd bought. Take note: The entire time we were working on the project, the supervisor (a/k/a my cat) watched safely from his perch at the patio door.

Of course, what I had bought didn't quite fill the area, so I decided I needed to run to get a few more plants, and maybe, just maybe some sort of garden statue or animal to fill the space between the hose reel and the water fountain. Monday morning Mom and I made another trip to Plymouth, first stopping at Fleet Farm, where I got the most AWESOME frog whom the neighbor kids later named Ribbit and then went to the nursery for one more plant run. The rest of the project would have to wait, though, since we couldn't get the mulch until after the holiday.

Someone needs to tell my dad that his daughter is NOT a morning person, because he was at my house before 6:30 Saturday morning with the mulch, and was ready to get moving. Of course, he had the worse end of the deal, since he was the one carrying the mulch in 5 gallon buckets because the wheelbarrow tire had a blow-out the weekend before. My job was simply to spread the mulch. In the end, though, all of the hard work was worth it.

After two weekends of supervising, the cat is ready for the yard work to be over so he can get back to his normal life...all of this planting is hard work!

Dungeon of Doom

Wow! I actually do have a few readers of my blog, and thanks to those of you who've prodded me to keep going.

After a brief delay last weekend, I finally got started on the basement this weekend, with the help of my mom. My brother J had a crazy weekend so he got to skip out, but that's okay. We have projects for him when he gets home. For those of you who know my dad, you'll understand why it's going to be a much easier process if he stays away until the basement is clean and ready for remodeling (long story short...he doesn't do well with "purging" items). We spent a good portion of the day on Saturday and about half of Sunday cleaning what will continue to be the "utility/storage" room. At this point, it's about 80% of the way to where it should be, and since I'm working an hour from home on Friday, I should be able to get a little work done that evening. Hopefully by Saturday I'll have that room as done as he can until a certain totally awesome little brother gets a few things done (installs the tray under the washing machine in the laundry room above, plumbs the drain from said tray, etc).

So far, I'm still on track to being done with the cleaning by mid-June (4 more weekends). If I can pull that off, I can get my building permit and we can start all of the "rough" work that needs to get done behind the scenes (extending the central vac PVC piping into the new room, running the necessary wiring for television, internet, and electricity, and getting the water into the bathroom). My goal is to have that all done so that the drywall can go in by the beginning of September.

So thanks to those of you who've pushed me so far. Once the clean-up is done, I'll start posting pictures throughout the remodel.

Have a great week!