Remodeling the Basement

Before I go any further with this post, you might be wondering why I am making all these entries today.  Well, the MEN have all gotten together at Phlegm Boy's house up in Montana for a post-Thanksgiving manly-man reloading party:  no women allowed.  Oh, but wait...there will be a SHOPPING trip for the WOMEN next Saturday.  Only two problems with that:  1.)  I HATE shopping, and 2.)  I have to work (thank God!).  So Noah is off swapping tall tales with the guys and casting lead bullets & I'm here with a free day to catch up on my blog.  I've had several things to share and talk about, but I haven't had time, so today seemed like the perfect day to catch up.

Anyhow, now that I've got that off my chest, I'll proceed.  Noah and I have been hard at work remodeling the basement from a big empty space into a beautiful master bedroom.  Now before you get too excited, it's not quite finished yet.  It's actually taking a bit longer than expected (we thought we'd knock it out in 4 weeks last summer)...but it's taken a bit longer.  The first glitch was the fact that the floor slab was seriously cracked and needed to be removed.  That invovled about two weeks of jack hammering followed by another two weeks of hard labor removing all of the broken up concrete and digging out about another 6 inches of dirt from the space.  Then the slab needed to be re-poured, and of course the concrete had to be brought in in wheelbarrows.  After the slab dried, there was the framing and then the electrical.  Noah has got that place wired with more lights than the White House Christmas Tree.  Next came the drywalling.  We've been working on that for the last couple of weeks.  With a last final effort, we were able to complete the drywalling on Thanksgiving (except for the window wall--we can't do that until the new door & window are in, but that side's easy).  So here's how it looks so far:

What's the next move?  New door and window, finish the drywall on that side, then ceiling insulation and installation (we're going to hire out the ceiling installation--thank goodness!)  We've got a guy lined up to tape and mud the walls (one of my former students at the college--a good way to meet good people), I'll paint, and then we've got our tile guy ready to lay tile on the floor.  It should be spring by then, so we're going to put a new cement patio outside (and my hot tub), and then we'll be ready to move in.  I'm thinking around June 1st or so.  Happy day!!