It's begun

We've done it again ... embarked on another major construction project on the house.  A reminder of what's happened so far (from a construction standpoint):

• Master Bathroom
• All new flooring (including staining existing staircase and adding a runner)
• New fire place
• New roof

Then there's the minor, non construction stuff which includes paint, changing of hardware (goodbye brass fixtures), changing of most light fixtures, changing of toilet seats (seriously - we basically moved into a frat house), landscape cleaning up (including Corey's grass project which seems to be going well - it's growing), and probably many other little things I am forgetting from the past 1 year and 3 months.

It's on to the basement!!!  I am so excited for this remodel.  It will add an extra 1,500 square feet of living space to our house.  Yay!

Here's the plan.  Hope you can see it OK.

The basic flow is this: walking down the stairs to the left will be the "playroom" with a wall of closets for storage (thanks to my mom for the idea of adding those!), then an "adult TV room" next to the playroom with just a half wall so that we can play pool and still watch TV (genius, Corey).  Walking down the stairs to the right will be a half bathroom and we are "roughing in" for a bar in that area too - to be completed once we have more funds.  There will be storage behind the bathroom and to-be bar, as well as a closet under the stairs.  (some of those scribbles on the plans are Ethan's, some are mine).

The work got started last Friday with material drop off and some framing.

We anticipate the project taking probably 6 weeks.  I hope it's done by Thanksgiving.  The contractor is doing framing, electrical, plumbing, drywall, and trim finishes.  This doesn't include any flooring or paint (so we will have a bit of work left to do when they are done with the major stuff).

I always forget how much work it is to have a construction project going on ... if I didn't forget I wouldn't have taken it on now.  But, I think it will be nice to have done by the winter for Ethan to play and we definitely need it before the spring storms so we have a safe refuge.

As of now, this basement project is going better than the master bathroom!  On the master bathroom remodel day 1 we had water dripping from the bathroom downstairs into our family room.  We lived with buckets and holes in the ceiling for a few days before we had to completely move everything out of the family room to get a new ceiling.  And, when prepping for the new ceiling, the contractor put down sticky floor covering that ripped up the floor finish and caused us to have to get new floors.  Nothing happened on Friday when we started the basement - I think I like the more "non-eventful" flavor of this job already (but, there is time for something to go wrong!)