Basement Regression

I am going to try my hardest to not cry my way through this entire post!!  I mentioned in my last post my basement had slightly regressed...  Well I THINK I'm ready to talk about it... be prepared... its UGLY!!!!

When I left off on our basement progress we had turned our basement rec room from an ugly carpeted mess into this beautiful newly floored and ceiled space!! Before and Afters below

Wasn't she pretty!!!!!!

WELL this is where I start to cry... literally... this pregnant lady was a big ball of crying mess!! A few days after finishing the floor when we were installing the crown moulding in the basement a few things happened.  First off the newly laid floor came unclicked together in about 6-7 different spots!!  ARGH!!  We realized that installing the laminate on top of carpet underpad was a big NO NO!  It was too soft and spongy.  No big deal... we figured we'd just take the the flooring super carefully (keeping all the pieces in the right order), take up the carpet under pad, install the new under pad and then reinstall the flooring. Annoying yes but not a huge deal. So during Norah's nap I went down there and took up all the new flooring.  Ripped up the underpad and I believe the words that came out of my mouth were something of AH @#$*&@%#(*"&)!&*!&$%@#*"&!

Under the old underpad were super old cracking vinyl tiles.. We knew the tiles were under there. However when you stepped on some of them (ones right in the middle of the floor) the entire floor moved about a half inch.  BIG PROBLEM!! We knew if we installed the new floor on top of it it would just keep coming unclicked!!  ARGH!!  Next problem... the old vinyl tiles were 9 inch tiles... and since our house was built in the 40's there was a REALLY good chance that they were asbestos tiles!! MORE ARGHs and !#$(&)&#%*&!#$&(@#*$!!  So we did nothing... we stressed about what to do! Finally this week a friend came by and ultimately solved our problem.  We had the entire floor ripped up!!  When they ripped it all up they found the subfloor was all rotten from old water damage! There was black mould down there and just nasty grossness! (thats my technical term for it) I don't have any pictures of the grossness as I was at work (thankfully because apparently it smelt awful!!!)  I came home yesterday to find my basement looking like this!

They got rid of all the nasty floor and laid a brand new concrete floor for us!!!  By 6pm last night this is what my basement looked like!!

So yes we moved backwards... BUT all the mould and asbestos are gone!!!!!  It cost us around $500 to do because we pulled in a few favours.  Gotta love friends!!!!  Next up we need to reinstall our floors and baseboards! Thats for another day!!!!

Dungeon Transformation

We have made substantial basement progress in the past month!!!  First up we sent Norah to grandparents for an entire Saturday to Sunday morning. We spent that Saturday from 9am until about 6:30pm down in the basement!!! I'm telling you we were on a mission!

Just to recap, here is a true before picture of the basement (I finally found it!!) and remember we have already ripped out the old ceiling and installed a new ceiling and pot lights, see here! This was taken just after moving in so the basement is a DISASTER!!! But you can see the crack in the ceiling. What you can't see is off to the left of this picture a HUGE hole in the ceiling!

And the view from the fireplace.

When most people get rid of the kid/s for a day/night they relax and go for a nice dinner... nope not us! We had already done one coat of primer on the ceiling and the walls on the Friday night after Norah went to bed. Since the primer covered so nicely on the ceiling we started Saturday morning by doing the first coat of paint on the ceiling and adding a second coat of paint to the walls. The walls are stucco and a royal PAIN IN THE BUTT to paint!!! As we started to prime the walls white we realized just how disgusting the old walls were... I am assuming they were once white... WAAY too many years ago. The picture below is primed with one coat on the left and the original walls on the right! EWWWW

Here it is zoomed out, can we say GROSS!!

After the walls were finished being primed and the ceiling was completely painted it was time to rip up the carpet! We got out of masks because we knew this was going to be dusty and overly gross!  Getting the carpet up itself was no problem and we discovered the underpad was still in great condition which at the time we thought was a big bonus! (hindsight... argh... I'll come back to this!).  We also discovered that under the carpet there was a subfloor followed by 2 layers of tiles!!! We didn't want to open a whole new can of beans so we just ignored the layers of tiles and leaving the underpad there we decided to install our new flooring. The biggest pain was getting all of the tack strips up from the carpet. Those were installed right which meant crowbars and manual labour to rip it up!

At this point we SHOULD have finished painting the walls before working on the flooring but we were both so exhausted we wanted to do the flooring! We had picked up some amazing laminate at a warehouse near us for 99 cents a square foot! We started to install it according to directions (and the same way we installed the floor in the old house here) and ran into a problem because it kept sliding towards the wall or going crooked. We realized we needed spacers to keep it from bumping up against the wall as we tapped new boards in place.  We hummed and haaa'd about it for 5 seconds and then I noticed our bookshelf FULL of DVDS... PERFECT.  Ryan laughed at me at first and then realized this made a HUGE difference.  Use what you've got! 

We knew we wouldn't get the entire floor done because there was a spot that we needed to level the concrete on which we hadn't done yet.  But we really just wanted to do half the floor!  We had gotten almost there when I walked over a spot a few rows back and heard a crunch... I froze and looked at Ryan!  Upon inspection one of the lips on a board about 4 rows back had broken (faulty board probably). Which meant we had to uninstall 4 rows of flooring to get all the way back to the one board and replace it.  This is when we realized we should have lifted up the original underpad and installed thinner less squishy underpadding. But at this point we weren't starting ALL over again! So we went backwards, replaced the board and moved on.  We made it half way across the floor and were hungry and exhausted so we called it a night! Then the next morning we got up early and just before heading out to pick Norah up and take her to the zoo we rolled a coat of the yellowy green paint on the walls. I was thrilled that it looked like I wanted it! I'm always worried about colours in basements because they can look sooo much darker than you really want them. So this is how we left it.

 Fast forward about 3 weeks. The basement sat in the state above for about 3 weeks before we managed on the Easter long weekend to send Miss Norah to her grandparents for a night.  On the Sunday morning we knew we had limited time so we moved fast. We finished up the flooring (which took about 2 hours this time), touched up some paint, cleaned the floors and dusted up all the crap lying around from when the ceiling was removed.  And this is where we are today!

The area to the right of the photo above is where we play to build a built in custom couch! We opted to not install flooring there because it is a round alcove and the cuts to do the flooring would be a real pain in the butt. Plus with the custom couch being permanently installed there would be no point because you wouldn't see it!

 If you look back to some of the progress photos you can see an ugly light hanging in the middle of the room.  Because of the way the house/basement are wired we had to leave the original electrical box in the middle of the room and it needed to be accessible. We had originally decided to just put a white cap over the hole to cover it up until Ryan came up with the brilliant idea to wire a smoke detector there!! It is functional AND covers the ugly hole!!!

We have bought baseboards and crown moulding which we plan to install this weekend (these can be done while Norah plays down here!) Depending on how Norah naps we may also start the custom couch construction!

Here is a side by side photo of the Before and the In Progress. Just for reference the pot lights REALLY bring in that much more light!! The old basement was SUPER dark and you could never see anything in there!

Why Didn't We Do This Sooner????

I'm going to admit I thought I would NEVER say the phrase "I love my basement".  Our basement was that super creepy basement that no one ever likes to go in, it was dark and dingy. Not to mention cold!!!  Here is a sneak peak at what it looked like when we moved in.  The black thing on the wall was actually a window!! There are 2 windows down there that they had covered up because some idiot drilled speaker wire through the window frame to get sound outside... Needless to say we still need to get new windows BUT we at least uncovered them to let in some light!

We ripped up the astro turf carpet (no joke) when we first moved in and just lay down some area rugs on the concrete floors.

After painting the wood panelling a nice 'eggnog' (by Behr) I painted the zee brick the same colour as I mentioned in this post. I still have one wall yet to finish but I'll hopefully get to that this week. That really helped to lighten up the basement.

Then we got some carpet from my parents place when they replaced their carpet. We didn't install it we just lay it down on the floor as a temporary solution.  Then 2 weeks ago we decided it was time to actually install it! We got everything we needed and started to lay it down only to find a few problems.  First off the 2 pieces of carpet had been weathered from the sun shining through the windows at my parents place and we quickly found they were 2 different colours... one a pinkish brown the other a grayish brown. That I could have lived with.  The second problem was that Ryan and I had serious measuring issues that day and when we cut the carpet we somehow (still have no idea how because we measured 3 times) short cut the piece by 5 inches which meant we had this tiny little strip of carpet down the one wall.  And thirdly... we are NOT carpet installation experts... we did a horrible job (mostly because we didn't have the proper tools).  SO after getting half the carpet installed we stopped and thought about it for a week.  We had planned on returning the laminate we bought for upstairs as we decided not to install it in the kitchen. I measured out the basement and was happy to find we had MORE than enough flooring to install it in the basement.  On Saturday Ryan's mom came and watched Norah as we installed the flooring. It was surprisingly SUPER easy and a lot of fun!!!  Ryan got to use my dads table saw and cut all the pieces while I measured (5 times sometimes just to make sure) the pieces.  AND here is what it looks like now!!!!

You can see where the window is... new windows should be coming before winter which will help brighten it up too!!!!

I need to add some lighting to the back area but this is the sitting area.  There will be a tv above the electric fireplace soon enough.

Look at those nice new baseboards!!!!!

And this section at the bottom of the stairs will be Norah's new play area!

It isn't finished yet. I still have to finish painting the zee brick behind the wood burning stove.  The baseboards need to be caulked, sanded and painted.  I somehow missed a small section of zee brick in the entrance to the laundry room (you can see if above).  I also want to paint the gate in the picture above the same colour as the walls.  Ryan and I LOVE IT!!!! I just can't wait for new windows so it makes the place brighter... and warmer!!!

Updated Progress... Or Lack There of it!

I thought I would take a minute to inform you of the progress on our current projects.

First lets start with the basement bathroom.
Tiling: the tiling is basically done, there are few tiles in the entrance to be done but we have a little dilemma that we haven't figured out how to rectify just yet. Nothing major, just don't know which way to put the tiles so they look the best. Long story short its a weird entrance and either we make it look nice but the tiles don't match up with the rest of the bathroom (ie the grout lines don't match up) or we match the grout lines but it looks slightly off. Either way its going to look slightly funny.

Grouting: Since the rest of the tiles were finished Ryan and Dave spent last Saturday grouting the bathroom and I have to say it looks fabulous!!!!

Heated Flooring: Is connected and pumping out the warmth!!!! We are very impressed with it and have it set on a schedule to turn up when we're home and down in temperature when we are not home. LOVE IT!

Drywall: We have yet to finish mudding the drywall... which means no painting just yet.

Fixture Installation: We still need to install the fixtures... nothing really stopping us other than finishing the mudding and painting.

Door: Yes we still need to put a door on the bathroom... kind of a key for a bathroom. We have a door we just have to get around to dealing with it.

So as you can tell the basement bathroom is close but still a little ways away from being completed!!

Painting the Basement Fake Brick Walls
Well... one wall has been primed with 2 coats and has one coat of paint on it and its looking great!!!! The other wall however has one coat of primer on it... So hopefully this weekend I can finish the 2nd coat of primer and a coat of paint on that final wall plus on the missed wood panelling that is around our built in shelves down there. Once the painting is done I can put the basement back in some type of order and it will look a lot less chaotic!!!

New Flooring Installation Upstairs
Currently the new flooring is being stored under our spare bed... which means this project will not be getting done anytime in the near future!! Which is fine with me!!

I've just been so exhausted lately that when I have a free moment I sit on my butt and watch tv!!! I still need to tidy up the babies room before she arrives in approximately 4 weeks. Plus I haven't cleaned the house in 3 weeks... its getting furry with dust bunnies!!!!!

Hopefully, I can finish the painting this weekend and get the house clean! I have a day to myself Saturday which will be good as Ryan is out and Sunday other than a maternity photo shoot we don't have much going on. Fingers crossed things come together easily!!!

Basement Progress

We have a little more progress on the basement. Ryan and I worked on the second coat of primer... we had planned to paint one coat of paint on it too but never got around to it because we had too much other stuff to work on (aka catching up on sleep). I may get around to a coat today if I feel up to it! GOODBYE ZEE BRICK WALL!! (well technically it is still there but looks soooo much better!!!

And the basement bathroom has had huge progress!!! Ryan's brother had been busy with the tiling, there have been lots of funny cuts and angles in this bathroom so its taking a little while. BUT finally its soooo close to being done. All that is left is the ceiling in the shower and the white trim tiles around the bathroom. Its VERY exciting!!!!

Here is the shower, you can see our built in shelf on the right side for all our shampoos etc.

Ryan is so excited for his bathroom!!

SO CLOSE!!!! After the tiling is done we just have to finish taping the drywall and then paint and install the fixtures and we have a second bathroom!!!! SO EXCITING!!!

Transforming the Dungeon

Our basement has undergone a few minor transformations since we have lived here but it still felt like a dungeon to me! Probably because we have only ever used it for storage! BUT with the baby on the way we wanted to make it a second living room so we would have a place for all of her toys in the future.

This is what the basement looked like when we first bought the house... it literally was a dungeon! Gotta love the astro turf carpeting and blacked out window!!

The first part of our transformation was done 3 years ago where we painted the wood panelling a nice cream and ripped up the astro turf and put small blue area rugs on the floor for the mean time. This worked for a bit but then as the renovations upstairs continued and the furniture was collected we slowly had WAY too much furniture and it somehow all ended up in the basement!!

Then after accumulating some couches and too much furniture I stupidly let Ryan do what he wanted in the basement... which transformed the basement into a disaster as he hung ALL of his framed photos on the wall (in no particular order...) We also have one too many couches down there but the one in the picture below will be gone soon enough and I plan that space to be play area for the baby. We will have a play kitchen set there that was mine when I was kid!

This is our new fireplace that I mentioned before! And do you see the new carpeting? My parents ripped up the carpet in their house that was still in good condition and we took it. It is NOT installed yet.. just laid down so we could keep our toes warm. We didn't want to install it while we were doing the basement bathroom!

This is the other side of the basement... gotta love that fake brick wall. Originally we never painted it... I have no idea why... I think I thought you couldn't paint it. Not sure what my reasoning was but the new plan was to paint it and make it brighter. (Notice the 2 random placements on the Elvis pictures on the wall... yes that was Ryan!! )

To the right is the laundry area and to the left is the rest of the basement and the door to the basement bathroom.

This is the rest of our basement, as you can see more fake brick! And our wood burning stove which is currently disconnected because the pipe disintegrated!! AHHH.

This is the stained glass window that came with the house... somehow the wood panelling around the stained glass never was painted... I wasn't supervising the painting process!!!

Now while most people who get a week off decide to relax all week... I on the other hand decided it was the perfect opportunity to paint the fake brick wall!!! I pulled out my primer and took a stab at the brick wall behind the couch. This was halfway through the first coat of primer, I still had to get in the cracks with a brush. Even with just primer it looks SOOO much better!!!!

By the time I finished priming one coat of paint on the brick wall I was pretty exhausted BUT I had a little bit of paint left in my tray so I decided to prime the wood paneling around the stained glass. Doesn't it look SO MUCH BETTER already! It brightens it all up!!!

Now that was just the first coat of primer... it takes a lot longer to paint things when you are pregnant... OH and yes I know they say you shouldn't paint when pregnant... but honestly I don't care. I wasn't down there long enough to inhale a bunch of the fumes. The plan today is to hopefully do the second coat of primer and then a coat of paint!! We'll see.. its possible if Ryan helps out! Plus we still have the brick wall behind the fireplace that needs painting... I didn't have the energy to get to it yesterday!

Keeping Warm

Last week my company had a warehouse sale where we sold a bunch of the furniture from our model suites and all of the proceeds were donated to charity. Now the furniture we use to furnish our model suites is top of the line stuff and it was being sold (for the most part) at ridiculously low prices. I went and took a peak on Thursday not expecting to find anything... overall on Thursday when I left I was slightly disappointed... mind you we really don't need ANYTHING for our tiny house... we need to get rid of a bunch of things (anyone want some dressers???). ANYWAY, that night my sister in law called me asking if they had any electric fireplaces at the sale. And I thought about it and realized there had been 3 of the same type of fireplace and I had looked at it but couldn't see a price tag and had just assumed it was well out of my price range for something that I didn't REALLY need. They asked me to go back Friday and check it out for them. SO I went back on Friday and was SHOCKED at the price tag!!! 2 of the 3 fireplaces were already taken and there were plenty of people interested in the 3rd one. As I waited for a call back from my sister in law I made a spur of the moment decision and bought it anyway thinking if they didn't end up wanting it I would 100% be able to use it in our basement to heat things up down there (its not insulated and has no radiators... which = COLD). Yes eventually we would like to insulate the basement BUT that means MORE renos and there is only so much we can do before the baby comes. SO I bought the fireplace and about 2 minutes after my sister in law called to say they didn't want it as it doesn't really go with their stuff, which is true.. its VERY modern looking, but for our basement it will be perfect.

Enough with this blabbering story... This is our new fireplace that we scored for a whooping $200. Yes that is correct!!! I would like to note that it is about 4 feet tall and about 5 feet wide... so its a big fireplace!! (This is a picture of it at the warehouse... I haven't gotten a picture of it in the basement yet as there is sooooo much furniture all over the place in the basement because of the renovations... but take my word for it, it looks AMAZING in the basement)

It is in mint condition, the only thing it is missing is the remote BUT the on/off switch is right on the front so it isn't a big deal. I LOVE IT!!

Now just to make this story better... I did this all without consulting Ryan... oops! I was SOOO afraid all afternoon that he was going to be so mad and make me sell it (can't return it obviously). When I got home I showed him my purchase and sneakily asked him how much he thought the fireplace was at full price and how much he would have paid for the fireplace... both of his responses were WAY more than what #1 I paid for or #2 I would EVER pay for it. SO I happily informed him I only spent $200 on it and he was shocked and SO happy!! heehee!! I was sneaky, I knew if I had told him I had spent $200 right away he would have been upset that I bought something we totally don't need just because it was on sale... :-) We didn't get it set up until later on Saturday but he LOVES how it looks downstairs and so do I!!! I can't wait till the basement bathroom is done so I can work on cleaning up that basement so we can ACTUALLY use it!!!