Red White and Remodel

Happy 5th of July!

I hope you all enjoyed your day off and celebrated America's birthday with a bang!

Personally, I spent most of my day agonizing over what patriotic outfit to wear to our family BBQ.

Via

OR

Via

Both were such great options, I wore them both. Without a shirt, as they were clearly intended to be worn....

And then I rode my magical unicorn over to the BBQ.

While I was struggling with fictional fashion choices, Chris was busy kicking off another remodel.

He doesn't understand the term "day off" since he scheduled an 8:30am meeting with a contractor to start a bid on the basement & backyard projects.  Although I pretended to be grumpy about such an early meeting on a sleep-in-day, I'm actually really excited for this project to start.

I do realize that just a few short months ago I was complaining about the remodeling dust from our kitchen, but I'm officially over that and onto the excitement of something new.

I don't talk much about the basement since it is kind of a nothing space right now (and its filled with random junk).  We literally only go down there to do laundry, so there is not much to say.

When we bought the house we knew that we wanted to finish the very un-finished basement someday, but its a BIG undertaking and so we had to save up for it and really plan ahead.  

Now that we are 1 year and 3 months into owning our house, we are ready to kick it off, and apparently we like to do that on National Holidays- poor contractor having to work!  We are working with a new contractor for this project, one that works exclusively on old homes and re-doing basements as his full time business.  This is key when we need to do some "partially-to-code" things with our stairs which are "currently-not-even-close-to-code."  

He is working on designs and official drawings this week that we will need to submit to the city- I'll share those as soon as we have them back from him.  If all goes well, the first sledge hammer could fly in as little as 3 weeks from today! 

Which means, that we will be just finishing up construction as Oscar(ina) arrives.

Yes, we are crazy, we know that. Construction & newborns are not generally thought to mix.

Before you start judging and saying things like "they are absolutely nuts" & "what are they thinking," you don't even have the whole story yet.  We are also getting a puppy in 2 days.

Yes, you read that right.  Puppy. Remodel. Newborn. All in 3 months.

Now, feel free to judge away.

While you are busy comprehending that madness, here is a tour of the current sate of affairs.

Project one: Finish the backyard fence and hole

Hole is still in in effect- we are planning on filling with dirt and building a fence

Before we can get the dirt poured into the hole/pit, we have to fill the gap between the stairs and the wall.  Chris has poured the first layer of concrete to fill the gap.

Here is the back side of the stairs, in progress with cement

Current View

Current View

Mock up of what it will look like with a fence and shed

So, that is phase one, which we hope to have completed in the next few weeks (especially since the puppy is coming very soon).

Once that phase is done, we will move onto the big time project- the basement.  Since we don't have any mock ups or designs drawn yet, I'll just show you what we are currently working with.

Project two: Completely gut and finish out the basement.

Our plans are as follows: create 3 distinct spaces- a mud room, a family room/rec room and a laundry room.  Right now we have all three spaces semi-defined, but everything you see will be ripped out and we are going to start from scratch.

These stairs have never heard of the word "code"

Right side landing into the "laundry room"

Left side landing into the "mud room"

Glamorous laundry room with 1982 washer/dryer

Hallway to "rec room" (the big blue thing is our boiler)

Weird space they framed out next to the boiler, which is currently home to our freezer (full of Marty the Cow) and Chris' golf clubs and other sporting equipment

Weird framed out door from laundry room into "rec room"

Back half of the "rec room" where we keep the mower and mattresses

Work bench in the middle of the "rec room" where we keep paint and tools

Front part of "rec room" with our earthquake retrofit for the Foundation and the sliding doors to "under the house" aka "dirt

Under the house aka Dirt (and ladder storage)

Side of the "rec room" with random stuff

Door into the "mud room" which goes to the back yard

Under stairs storage

Hello backyard

"Mud room"with gardening storage

Stairs and clothes line

So now you've seen the basement and you can understand why its a total gut job. Thank goodness this is NOT going to be a DIY project.  Sometimes, professionals are just what you need.

Now, back to judging us for a puppy, baby and remodeling. Once you have stopped judging, please tell me that you have taken on WAY TOO MUCH at once many times and it was just fine.

Or lie to me. I'm fine with that too.