The Basement

The basement.  When we moved into our house 4 years ago we were so excited about being able to finish the basement on our own.  The chance to "be in charge" and make our own little personal touches seemed like it would be so much fun, and for the most part, it has been.  I'm not sure if I realized it would take us 4 years to finish, and technically (if we must be so) all that is completely finished is the family room.  :)  Oh, and the storage room.  But progress is progress.  I thought I had been really good taking pictures along the way, but I guess when the process is so slow you forget.  We just worked on it as we had extra cash.  Which, as you can tell, wasn't often.  haha

Here it is in all its raw glory.  This was taken right after we bought the house. 

January 2009

This was the best one I could find of an in between stage.  You can tell that the family room is sheet-rocked, but nothing else is really even framed.  At this point Ryan had done some electrical and the heating.  What a stud!

May 2010

 Between then and now, much of the work was internal.  More electrical, and we did finish off framing the hall and bedrooms.  This was the final stages of the family room and the hallway.  I thought I got one with all the doors in, but I guess not.  :)

December 2012

January 2013

  

The painting project could use its own post, but I decided to just keep it here.  Way back in the beginning I saw a green color at Ikea that I fell in love with.  Ever since then I wanted it in my basement.  Through all the years I never changed my mind, but once it was coming down to it I did start to get a little nervous.  It was a bold color!  Somewhat last minute I decided to do stripes.  I was feeling pretty tired from all the craziness of trying to get everything done before carpet and wasn't sure if I was actually going to do it.  But, Jacque was a trooper and came up for the day to help me out.  We have a laser level so I wasn't too worried about the stripes.  That is until I dropped the laser level as we were getting ready to use it.  Then it was good 'ol measuring for us!  If I may say so, I think we did a pretty dang good job though!

Stripes up and ready to be painted!

I was a little nervous...like I said, its a bold color.

 I read over quite a few tutorials on painting stripes.  Seemed straight forward.  However, I forgot one step...that is to mark off the stripes you AREN'T painting.  Yep...this was a panic moment.  Luckily, a wet rag and a little scrubbing and we were good.

Stripes effectively marked off

 Jacque has helped me with every paint job in my house.  Be ready Jac....there are still two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a laundry room to go!

We finished the paint on Saturday, and carpet was going in on Monday.  I was exhausted, but excited. 

The pad.  (Look at those straight stripes!)

 And, we have carpet folks!

January 2013