The Construction Continues

Matt has moved on to the other half of the basement now. I am so proud of him. Somehow he squeezes in time while he works full time and is taking two college courses at the same time. We had to tear down the ceiling in the tiled room and one and half walls (which were stucco - yuck!) Matt raised the duct to give a little more headroom as well. He's also working on making the unfinished laundry room into two rooms: one unfinished tool room in the back and one finished laundry room in the front. It's really coming along considering the little time Matt actually gets to spend working down there.

The Writing on the Walls

We've acquired quite a bit of trash through all of this demolition. I don't know if I'd be exaggerating if I said that we had about 50 or so contractor trash bags full of drywall and plaster, nails, dirt, and dust under our sunroom. Fifty might even be an understatement. My Uncle Bobby has been awesome enough to get rid of a ton of the trash for us, and so he was here for a few hours today helping out with that. While he was getting rid of the trash, I put my cousins to work. Tiana tested out our new lawnmower. She did a fantastic job on the front of the house, but I think it was a little more tiring than she expected. We'll get to the backyard later in the week. At least our neighbors won't think we're slobs!I decided to put my godson Cory to work as well. I brought him down in the basement to the half bath and let him go to town.

He did such a good job, we even let him write his name on the walls. This may be the only time it is okay, right, and appropriate to write on a bathroom's wall.

Tiana wanted to do a little as well.... get out some aggression, so we let her take a hammer to the wall a few times, too.

Besides Uncle Bobby, Tiana, and Cory, we also were lucky enough to have my mother here cleaning the entire basement out once again, Matt's parents and Uncle Mike working on the basement for a while, and my Uncle Paul and cousin Anthony doing the electrical in the basement. Once again, we've been so lucky and so blessed to be able to count on so many people. We even had our new neighbor, John, come by yesterday and offer us the use of his lawn mower until we bought we one. I told him we had bought one just a few hours previous, but if this was his way of telling us our grass needed mowing, we'd get right on it!

Closets for Short People & Stairways for Tall

One of the biggest issues with the basement (of course, other than the aqua stucco walls and white stained carpeting) was that if I, at 4'11"ish, was to walk down the stairs, I barely cleared the bottom few steps. The coat closet in the living room caused the ceiling to be very low and, quite frankly, we were pretty worried that Matt or one of our other tall friends would knock themselves unconscious one night (see picture right). We decided that since we'd be doing all this work in the basement, we should definitely spend some time making the closet a little shorter and adding a few inches on so that tall people could go down our stairs carefree! After ripping up the carpets, prying off even more mirrors from the wall, and demolishing the rest of the walls, Matt and his dad started fixing the height today.

If you look close in the picture of the closet floor, you can actually see the saw cutting through my beautiful hardwood and getting awfully close to the doorframe.

After a little bit, the end result is more height in the stairs for tall people and a closet that's got a nice step in it so that I (and other short people) can reach the clothes bar better. We still need to add a laminate hardwood flooring over the top and side so that it looks halfway decent, but for the time being, it's doing its job!

Renovation Realities

The renovation reality is - nothing ever goes quite as planned... but isn't that the fun of it? Haha. Right now, our focus is on the basement. We've been really lucky so far; our family and friends have been amazing with helping us out. After the Matt, Eric, & Joe worked their tails off on Saturday, my Grandpa went down with Matt on Saturday night to do some nail-pulling and general cleaning up. My cousin Tony came over Sunday morning and pulled nails. It sounds so simple but considering how many nails hold up a piece of sheetrock, and how much sheetrock was nailed to the ceiling (far above my reach), it was a huge help. My Uncle Paul was over Sunday and Monday and ran all of our wires for us. He put in new light switches, ran wires in the ceiling for recessed lighting and internet, and fixed some other electrical issues. Eric came back on Sunday and helped Matt with more of the demolition and clean-up. We've got piles and piles of contractor trash bags full of sheetrock and nails and plaster right now. It's a little crazy.
Last night, I spent a couple of hours with Matt in the basement running speaker wire for the surround sound, cleaning up the messes, pulling even more nails, and generally prepping the basement for the arrival, today, of Matt's father and Uncle Mike, who are helping with the rocking of the basement. They got a chunk of it done today. Tonight, my parents came over to help with some more of the clean up. Matt finished the removal of sheetrock behind the bar. With the help of my parents, my Nana & Grandpa, and my little cousin Anthony, we were able to get the basement cleaned up, all of the trash bagged, and the walls ready for more sheetrock.
The upstairs is coming along, slowly but surely. The sheetrock dust from the basement is awful and I can't wait until the rocking is done so that I can clean my house and have it stay clean for more than five minutes. At least we're lucky enough to have such a fantastic family. We really can't show how much we truly appreciate what they've been doing for us over the past week. I think Matt would agree with me that we're pretty lucky.

Demolition Men

Things didn't go exactly as planned, but we're getting there. The other day, Matt and his Uncle Mike went and got all the sheetrock and other things we need for the basement. Yesterday, my cousin Tony and Matt tore up all of the carpet and loaded the trailer for a dump day this morning. Today, Matt and his friends, Eric and Joe, tore up the basement pretty good. Take a look back to see what the basement used to look like. Not quite the same...