A new railing

Not a super exciting update, but since we having been working on finishing out the basement with molding lately we finally also finished the railing on the "half wall" around our stairs which go down to the basement. The top of the wall was unfinished after it was drywalled, since we still needed to add a wood top to it (you could still see the edges of the drywall). So Matt spent a couple hours one night this week and got it done pretty quickly! Now I think I will just paint it white so it blends in better with the rest of our house and the molding everywhere.

The Roof

Well now that our basement is 90% done (we are still working on Doors, molding, and a few other finishes), why not have the roof of our house re-done right? Haha. Well this wasn't on my list of things to do, but Matt thought we should do it in the next 3-5 years anyways.... So when a new little company came into our neighorhood (their office is literally a block down the street on the main road) that does green home renovations, and offered to do our whole roof as well as replace our gutters and fix up part of our porch roof.... (at a killer deal since they are trying to get new business) we couldn't pass it up.

Luckily this project requires no work on my part, other than signing some paperwork, woo hoo!  And now by the end of summer we will have a brand new roof before the next winter.

Here are a few "before" pictures of the roof. You can see they have already delivered some of the materials and put it up on our roof where it has now been sitting for a week. Hopefully I will have finished "after" pictures in a few weeks.

Happy 3 years

As of July 18th we have been married 3 years! Can't believe it. Seems like just yesterday we were getting married, and yet at the same time it seems like we have done so much. We have gotten in quite a bit a travel (Egypt for one), accomplished a ton of projects on our house, and had so many fun times just hanging out with each other and friends. I can't wait for all the travels, projects, and adventures to come with my best friend. Love you Matt!

Paint & Carpet

Last week was a busy one. We spent Saturday/Sunday painting the basement with the primer, and then everything white. Then Monday and Tuesday I painted the main living room light grey and the bar area dark grey (it took 2 days since we did 2 coats and touch ups). My Dad even came down Tuesday night to help me paint which made things go much quicker! And while I worked on this Matt did the covers on all the lights and started finishing out the electrical outlets.

We were on a tight timeline since we scheduled carpet installation for Wednesday, and then had visitors coming that weekend. It all got done though which was amazing! Carpet was installed Wednesday, we got home that night and started moving all our boxes and stuff from upstairs down to the basement so that we could make our office upstairs into a suitable guest bedroom for my friends arriving on Thursday.

And here are a few pictures of the latest basement with paint and now carpet. Next up molding and doors...

It's hard to get a good picture of carpet. But in case you are wondering it's "loop" carpet, from the Martha Stewart line at Home Depot (made by Shaw). We chose the color "Glass of Milk" to keep it light colored in the basement. It's very plush (we got an extra good pad underneath it)... and a great bonus is that it has a 30 year warranty. 

You can already see the closet in our future office filling up with suitcases/Christmas decorations/my wedding dress boxed up/Matt's boxes of comics.... at least it's not upstairs anymore! 

Paint colors

We are actually painting the basement this weekend/week. Can't believe it. We started on Saturday by painting the whole basement with drywall primer and sealer. Matt was able to borrow a nice paint sprayer from a friend, so I think that made it go pretty quickly.

After many paint samples and going back and forth on colors, I think we have decided on our colors. We want the basement to feel airy and light (not dark since it's a basement) - so we are going with lots of white, with light grey, and some dark grey accents. We also plan to have some yellow accents once we have furniture and decor downstairs... I'm picturing yellow pillows on a dark grey couch, and my yellow glassybaby candles.

So... all of the ceiling and most of the walls (the office and bedroom in the basement for now) will be white... it's actually a shade of off-white which is not pure white, but still seems pretty white to me. Then the whole living room will have light grey walls (which we are hoping will make all of the white moulding really "pop"). And finally the kitchenette/bar area will have a very dark grey wall color, which we think will look cool against the bright white cabinets we plan to get.

So there you go. Wish us luck! A few last pictures of our white painted basement before the colors go on...

Office 

Living Room (ok not totally white... you can see some grey paint samples we were trying out on the wall)

And.... the final paint swatches... =) 

Basement update: Mud & Tape

I was working from home on Thursday morning this week for a few hours, so that I could meet with our carpet installer and he could do measurements. While waiting for him I took a look in at how the drywall mud and taping is going.

These guys have major skill. Makes me embarrassed to look at the 3 foot patch of drywall we did ourselves 6 months ago when we pulled an old freezer out of our kitchen wall. Oh well, at least I have learned now that this is one project to leave to the pro's. They are so fast, and everything looks perfectly smooth....

Best day ever... Drywall

We officially have drywall in our basement! It all went in yesterday (all in 1 day) as planned. It will still be another 5-7 days (planning on next Friday) for it to officially be done, since they need to tape and plaster it, and apparently there is drying time needed between each time they plaster and sand it.

In case anyone is wondering, it cost us a total of $3,000 for the whole basement to be drywalled including all the mud and taping. We also saved about $500 by doing all the cleanup of the drywall scraps and taking them to the dump ourselves. Seriously the best money we have EVER spent. SO happy.

Here are a few pictures:

Matt contemplating how amazing a drywalled basement is

 The view from our living room

View from the other side of our living room

Looking into our future office.. this room is going to be pretty big (seems larger now that there are real walls for some reason). Can't wait to move our desk and bookshelves down here and make it feel like a real grown up office/library. 

The far back guest room... had a difficult time getting a picture of this room, it's not actually that small, but there isn't a light in there yet and was hard getting a good picture from any angle. Still lots of drywall scraps in this picture too.