Hey guys! It's been awhile (again)!
A lot has been happening, and the drywall finishers are finishing up! The drywall has been hung and finished on 3 of the 4 floors. They are finishing up the attic this week! That means we have really started working on the house again, which means fiascos must follow, right?
Last weekend, we cleaned and painted the entire basement. The color we went with is Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore--we get all of our paint from Paint Headquarters close to Wesleyan Park Plaza. They are awesome! I really like going local when we can and they have great service that usually only local business can provide. David, the owner, is there all the time! Plus Shannon, their interior designer, is great. She always listens to my design anxieties with a smile and wonderful advice. She reassures my anxiety-ridden mind that I'm doing okay with my design choices.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the basement progress!
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| The beginning-painting the primer |
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| after the first coat |
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| lights look nice! |
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| Laundry area without the sink |
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| The new laundry sink, sans the faucet which we do have now! |
The basement will be Leo's "man cave" and the laundry room. Really it's for the entire family, but he just gets free reign on hanging whatever posters and sports memorabilia his heart could want! Minus actually painting the walls UK blue. I drew the line there. Call me crazy. I just can't do the blue walls.
We will also have the laundry room down there, which was the center of a huge debate for a while. What about resale value? Most people don't want the laundry room in the basement. Do we really want the laundry down there? The answer was yes. And since we are designing the house as a "forever home", and not for resale value, we went ahead an put it down there. Someone said, what happens when you get old and can't get up and down stairs? Um, if we can't get up and down stairs, getting to the laundry room is the least of our problems. Our house is on a hill. You have to go up several stairs to just get in the house!
Anyway, I bought some cabinets at an adoption sale for my friend Brittany. We are currently working on painting them white and making them look more "built-in" by continuing the base trim along the bottom and building a cabinet between them. I can't find an original picture (of course!)
Looks pretty good so far, so where is the fiasco?
This past weekend we decided to go get the sectional from my Mom's house that she is offered to us. You may see where this is going.
So we got the couch to the house.We had the two parts and we started to take the shorter one down first and we realize it might be smarter to take the longer section down first in case it didn't fit-probably one of our only moments of intelligence for the entire day. The staircase turns, instead of being straight.
So we take the longer section down the first part of the stars. It immediately starts to get stuck. We bcd it out and turn it the opposite direction. It goes a little farther and then gets stuck again. I really honestly don't remember who first made the suggestion, it might very well have been me, but all of a sudden we agree that if the first portion of the stairs were taken out, the couch would make the turn and fit. Oh, the stupidity. But it really did sound legitimate at the time.
So my Dad takes to sawzall to the stairs and cuts out the stringers and the treads. It goes a little farther. Then it gets stuck again. Okay, well if we just take out the top part of the second part of the stairs, it will definitely fit then. Wrong wrong wrong. It won't fit and the couch is getting a small tear and the walls are looking less than amazing. Our new walls, that were just hung, finished, and painted.
I was legitimately angry at this point. I've been tired and frustrated several times throughout this project, but for the first time I was angry. Why won't this couch just fit? We have torn out the stairs and scratched the new walls up in several spots...and we STILL can't get this ((lovely)) couch down the stairs?
So then we are like, if we cut the microwave box out, it will definitely fit. That's it, that's the key. Then, we can just rebuild it. Luckily, my Dad came to his senses and said no, we can't keep doing this! We have cut out the stairs and ruined the walls. So after two hours of trying, they backed the couch out and took it to the living room.
Now that I'm writing it, it doesn't sound much like a fiasco. But trust me, it felt like it. We were so stubborn, we just kept going and going, ignoring the obvious and rational. I don't have a picture of it actually occurring but my friend Jessica shared this with me, and I think it is pretty accurate! And amusing :)
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| ceiling damage |
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| the metal corner bead warped |
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| new stairs |
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| scratches on the wall |
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| the culprit (and also Molly the cat) |
On Sunday night we were painting the first floor when I hear my Dad say to Leo "I'm still angry about that couch...I'm thinking of trying to take it apart and put it back together down there."
Excuse me crazy man who has been around paint fumes for way too long? I think you need to go home and get some fresh air. We have bigger much bigger fish to fry. But that would certainly make for a good blog post, because I see so many things going wrong with that :)
I hope you all are having a great start to 2015! Things are really starting to pick up, so watch for a lot more posts to come!
-katie
P.S. If you made it this far, here is a sneak peak of one of the lights that was just installed yesterday! The pretty things are starting to happen :)
