Basement Progess

This weekend we got back at the basement reno. I guess you could say we took last weekend "off" because we had company, but I think we were both also getting a little tired of every spare weekend moment being devoted to the basement. So we both came back at it yesterday with a bit more drive and a bit more vision.

Well, not exactly...

Rob had mentioned on Friday how we wanted to get the drywall hung this weekend. So Sunday afternoon as he was preparing to snuggle himself into the couch for a long hard nap, the ever-trusty, bossy wife rose up in me and said "Didn't you want to work on the basement this weekend?"

Don't we all hate statements like that? Its one of those questions that the asker totally has a motive, its not just a matter of fact, la la la, type of question. Whereas the askee is totally stuck, because they know they said they wanted to do that, and now have no excuse not to do what they said they were planning to do. Sigh.

Anyway, after much grumbling, my husband removed himself from the couch and proceeded to the basement. I think originally begrudgingly so. The thing that's tricky about our basement reno is that I don't do this stuff 44 hours a week, so its easier for me to want to work at it for 3 hours on a Saturday. Whereas, Rob, the one with the actual skills, might just be a bit tired of drywall dust, kneeling, hammering, and power tools (well, no, lets be serious, no man gets sick of using power tools!).

We were able to work on the basement for most of the afternoon (Both kids napped, it was an incredible three hours of pure unadulterated basement bliss!). We had the "sparky" (the trade name for an electrician) come by that Rob has met through church. He is a 2nd year apprentice, and is a really great worker. We pay him $28 an hour, which is pretty incredible considering he is only a 2nd year (I often wonder if I should change my trade to Electrician...), but he works hard, fast, and most importantly does an excellent job.

Some of his electrician fabulousness...

This light would have been in the middle of our craft room wall, so we needed it moved. And voila!

The inside wall of the pantry/storage room. Its really not all that exciting of a picture, but I'm slightly mesmerized with all of the wires. One will be the switch to the stairwell, and one will be the switch to the main room, as well as the light switch for inside of the storage/pantry room (on the right).

And here are some pictures from our newly drywalled main room. Its unbelievable how much of a difference the drywall makes!

West Wall.

East Wall.

You can already access the under stair storage from a door behind that wall there, but then Rob had the brilliant idea to put a door here (likely a large cabinet door), so you can have easier access to the stuff further in under the stairs. Isn't my man brilliant?

Then instead of drywalling the staircase, we are going to put in a wood banister. I think it will open up the space considerably. Eventually we hope to do this on the upstairs stairwell as well.

Our main problem is this blasted telepost. This is one of the key structural pieces to our house, so we can't just up and move it, but it really limits what we can do here. So we are thinking of making it into a column that looks like it ties into the staircase. This one is going to require much thought...

This will be our storage/pantry room. Now that we have it somewhat drywalled, we realize its much smaller than we originally thought, so it will be tricky to put shelves in such a shallow room, but heck, in a place like this (with no garage), I think the more storage, the better.

The box on the upper left is for a wall sconce.

So now comes the "fun" part of mudding, and sanding. According to Rob this is the worst part of the entire process. I thought he said that about insulating too. Hmm. I should be getting another $100 gift card to Rona this week, and I'm 2/3rds of the way to another one already (seriously people, shopping at Safeway does pay off!). Once that arrives, we can start buying supplies for the next step in the process.

In the meantime Rob will finish the last bit of drywalling. The entire inside of the pantry room, including walls and the ceiling, need to be done. The two front walls of the pantry room (where the wall sconce will be). The ceiling at the bottom of the stairs. And a bulkhead around the large duct in the main room. We will eventually do a drop ceiling in here, but obviously all of the drywalling has to be finished before we move onto the flooring and ceilings.

And I just felt I needed to add that Rob did eventually thank me for my "reminder." He was quite pleased with all that got accomplished yesterday. So as lovely as the couch did sound, he did have the satisfaction of knowing he is one step closer to a lovely, basement retreat...