Project: Finishing the Basement - Part 2

I have a love/hate relationship with Spring.  On one hand I love that the weather is warming up.  I love being able to spend more time outside, spring clothes, and wearing flip flops again.  I do NOT like how busy things are.  With end of school testing and projects and spring sports things are totally NUTS at our house.  We have at least 2-3 things happening each and every evening and things are busy during the day too.  I am so ready for things to SLOW DOWN!

In addition to all the school projects and sports, we are also finishing our Playhouse Project and we put our HUGE garden in on Monday (posts to come).

But while things are crazy with our schedules, we are still making some major progress on the basement.  When we last saw the basement it looked like this.... a complete disaster!

All of our stuff was originally piled up in the middle of the room to make room around the edges for framing.  Now that we are done framing and ready to start drywalling the bedrooms and bathroom (the family room will be done later), it was time to move everything again.  Last week I spent a couple of days moving all of to the far end of the room in preparation for draping.

If you aren't familiar with the drywalling process, let me inform you how incredible dusty it is.  Drywall dust goes EVERYWHERE! And after they tape and mud and texture, they have to sand the walls which makes it go even more places.  So, all of our stuff had to be draped.

Kevin purchased a box of HDX Painters Plastic and a DeWalt Hammer Tacker to help me drape a wall to block out all the dust.  We know it won't be perfect, but it will be a whole lot better than nothing.

We wrapped the armoire and couches separately and used duct tape to secure it in place.

Using the Hammer Tacker, we stapled the plastic sheeting across the floor joists.  Where the two plastic sheets met (they slightly overlapped) we duct taped it together and also put blocks of wood on the floor.

We also draped off under the stairs as well as the storage room. 

But, we left a pathway back to the cold-storage.

They showed up to start sheetrocking on Monday morning this week and finished on Tuesday.  They came and taped yesterday and will start mudding and texturing next week.

I am thrilled with seeing space take shape.  The girls are beyond excited to see their rooms coming together.

I am getting bids right now for the tile floors.  As soon as the sheetrocking is done I will be spending MANY MANY hours painting ceilings, walls, and trim.  I've got a lot of work ahead of me.  But it will be worth it in the end.

Have you finished a basement before? Any tips and tricks for me?

Love this post? Be sure to comment! I'd love to hear what you have done to get your freezer space organized!

Project: Master Bathroom Update with Shutters and Storage

Hello friends! We've made a few update to our master bathroom since we moved in that have made such a difference in the space!  I absolutely adore my spacious bathroom, but there are a few things that I knew we needed right away in order to make the space work for us; shutters and storage!

This is the giant window over the tub in our master bathroom.  It offers a beautiful view to our backyard, the horses running in the fields, and the equestrian/walking trail that runs behind our home.  It brings in so much beautiful natural light in the bathroom.  What it doesn't offer is a lot of privacy!  I am not a huge fan of blinds, and plantation shutters are a bit pricey, so I needed to find another solution for this window.  I considered cafe curtains, but found nothing that I liked.  Then, I saw my friend and neighbor's blog, Amy's Casablanca, with her homemade shutters and I knew Kevin could build them and I LOVED them! They were the perfect solution.  They looked beautiful, offered plenty of privacy when needed, and yet could be opened to let in more light, and we could build them ourselves for a fraction of the price of plantation shutters! Win! Win! Win!

When we moved in, we hung up a sheet in the window to get us by, but Kevin quickly set to work and had them built within a few months.  The first ones he built were the ones in the toilet room. With only one set, they were his test run.  He built them out of MDF Trim and board that was already primed.  He also trimmed out the top and sides of the windows to give something to attach the hinges to and make the window look nicer (I hope to do this to all the windows in the house eventually).

Kevin built the shutters for the main window after working out the kinks and I absolutely adore how they turned out! I love that I can close the bottom for privacy, but have the top open to let in plenty of light.  I love the black hardware he chose.  It goes perfectly with the room and really makes a statement with the stark contrast to the white shutters and trim.

Even with our bathroom being so large, we don't have much storage in there.  We each get two drawers and a small cabinet under our sinks and I have a makeup drawer in the middle.  I was finding it difficult to find a place to put our extra towels and toiletries.  With the 5 kids sharing one bathroom, a lot of their extras are in the linen closet in the hallway, and there really wasn't room for our stuff too.  For a little white we were putting it up in the top of our closet, but that wasn't working either.  Then I found this great cabinet at Target.com.

The cabinet was perfect for our needs.  It was tall and thin and fit in the space we had between the door to our bedroom and our closet door.  It had a cabinet with glass and a cabinet that could hide things. And it had another drawer! Perfect! I purchased it and as soon as it came put it together!

In the top section with glass, I store our extra bath towels, hand towels, and wash cloths.  It is so much more convenient to grab them out of this cabinet rather than have to get a chair and climb into the to[ of the closet to grab a new wash cloth (I'm too short to reach the upper shelves!)

The bottom cabinet holds a lot of my extra toiletries and items that I use on a regular basis, but not daily.

The little drawer conveniently holds extra razors, lipsticks, and my stash of Homemade Peppermint Lip Balm.

These couple of changes have really transformed our space and made it work much better for us.  I love that they are not only functional changes, but they look great as well!

What changes have you made to your bathroom to function better? I'd love to see them!

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Project: Finishing the Basement - Part 1

Hello friends! I mentioned in our New Home posts that we would be finishing our basement, turning our 3-bedroom home into a 6-bedroom home, within the first year.  Well, that work has begun! We are very excited about this.  We currently have all 5 kids in 2 bedrooms, which is less than ideal.  We are, of course, making it work thanks to my mad organization skills, but it will be so nice to get all of the kids in their own rooms eventually.  The girls especially are anxious to not be crammed 3-to-a-room.

For our budget's sake, we are only finishing the 3 bedrooms, bathroom, and a couple of closets in the family room right now.  Once we get those done and the girls moved in, we will save up some more and finish the family room.

We had hoped to do most of the work ourselves to save some money, but Kevin's work schedule and his side business have been keeping him so busy that if we wanted to get it done, (which we NEEDED to do ASAP!) then we had to hire out a lot of it.

We were able to do some of the framing ourselves, but we ended up hiring out most of it.  We also hired out the HVAC (which we couldn't do ourselves) and the plumbing.

We have been able to do the electrical ourselves, and it is nearly done.  I had never pulled electrical before, but it was very easy.  We have a couple of electricians in the family, so we will have one of them actually hook it all up to the electrical panel.  We also had another Central Vacuum outlet put in downstairs.  It hooks in to our current system (which I love!!!!) and will just have to be hooked into the electrical as well.  Sheetrock will hopefully start next week if we can finish up a few more framing and electrical things.

Each of the girls bedrooms have been wired with can lights and a central main light.  I got some really great deals on Overstock for the main lights for each of the girls rooms.  I can't wait to show you once they get hung!

One of the changes we made from the original builder plans for the basement was the bathroom.  With 3 girls using the bathroom, I know space is going to be a premium, even with it being so large.  I'm not a huge fan of the long skinny bathrooms (like we had in our last house) when all of the girls are trying to get ready in the front of the mirror or I am trying to help them with their hair.  So, in the front part of the bathroom, with the vanity and mirror, I bumped out the wall and extra two-feet to give plenty of room for doing hair and getting around anyone standing in front of the vanity.  This is going to be wonderful!

For our vanity, we priced out many options, and Ikea could not be beat!  We are going to be doing a 24" linen cabinet, with drawers on the bottom, a 24" sink base, and 2 more 18" drawer bases.  So each girl will have a set of drawers for their stuff, plus some added linen closet space to hold extra towels and toiletries.  I'm still working on counter tops.  We also still need to pick the tile for the floor and shower.  We plan to do that during the sheetrocking phase.

Two of the girls rooms are going to have a closet (with a built-in organizer) for their clothes and an additional closet with just shelving (for toys/crafts/etc.) I'm really excited about the extra storage this is going to provide them! Yay for storage!

In this room we are going to be doing a window seat and built-in bookcases on either side of the window for my avid-reading daughter.  We put in additional small can lights above the seat with a switch nearby as well as near the entrance of the room.  With the additional storage she will have with the built-ins, we didn't do a storage closet in her room.

And this is the very DISORGANIZED rest of the space.  Most of the stuff in here will be going into the girls rooms.  There will also be room for a lot of it in the family room closets we are finishing.  Can I tell you how much this STRESSES ME OUT???? The mess is killing me.  But I am so excited for the finished product.  I can't wait! In the mean time, I am plotting all the organizing I am going to be doing when we are finished.  Now that will be FUN!

New House Update 4

Hello friends! Well, we are at the end!  The house is done and we will be moving in on Monday!  The last few weeks have been very stressful.  We've run into several issues that we wanted taken care of before we closed.  Mostly due to texture and paint on the walls.  There are still a few more things that will have to be taken care of after we move in....but we are so excited to finally get in!

July 18 - Kitchen Cabinets and granite have been installed.  The kitchen is one of the things that I have a grand vision for in the future.  I really want it to be beautiful and timeless.  I want white cabinets, stacked cabinets with glass and lighting up top.  Roll out cabinets.  Lots of customization inside the cabinets to help with organization.  That just wasn't going to happen with this builder and with our budget.  For one thing, to upgrade to white cabinets was going to be atlas $7,000 more.  And, the cabinets that the builder uses are not real wood.  They are melamine.  So even if spent $7,000 more, they weren't going to be what I really wanted.  And to add in all of the other extras I wanted it would not have even been possible for what I was willing to pay right now. 

My husband's cousin is a beautiful finish carpenter and builds custom cabinetry.  I had him come in before we even signed papers and quote what it would cost to get the kitchen that I really want.  It wasn't much more than what I would have paid the builder just to upgrade to white.  So, I decided to put in the cabinet that the builder included with the price of the house and in a few years, I will redo my kitchen the way I really want.  Luckily, the cabinets that came with the house are ones that I do like.  We have very similar cabinets in our current home.  I did add in a few upgrade just to make them more functional while I am going to be using them over the next few years.  After seeing them installed, I am happy with the choice that I made except for ONE thing.  I wish I had paid a little bit extra to get the 42" uppers.  Looking back, it really would have been worth the added expense and I think I would have liked the look of them better.  But considering everything else, that is my ONLY regret on finishes in the entire house.  Not too bad!

By the way, we are planning on putting in a full kitchen downstairs when we finish it, so my plan is to move the current kitchen cabinets down there when I get my new custom ones.  

I really love the granite that I chose.  It's called Black and White.  It matches really well with our current cabinets.  I think it will also go well with white cabinets.  And its great with the paint color.

They've also started working on the stucco on the outside of our house.

July 23 - The bathroom cabinets and counters have been installed.  Unfortunately they installed the cabinets in the master bathroom backwards, so they will have to fix that.  The original plans had only cabinets below the sinks, and I had put in a custom order for drawers.  But, I want the drawers on the inside of the cabinet instead of the outside.  I really don't like the bathroom light fixture, so that will also change in the future.  

There was also a problem in the upstairs bathroom.  They forgot to order the longer cabinet (because we pushed out the side wall 2 feet) so we have quite a large gap between the cabinet and the toilet.  Right now the plan is to add additional bank of drawers and redo the counter top.  Hopefully they get that done before we move in.

July 29 - They have begun installing the carpet.  We chose a light shade of gray.  We chose to upgrade the carpet pad a few levels but only upgraded the carpet one level since we plan to put hardwoods in most of the upstairs.  

August 1 - They have poured the cement on our driveway and stairs and are done with the stucco and working on the stone.

August 20 - We go the bank of drawers installed in the upstairs bathroom just in time!

August 22 - It is done and we closed on it this morning!  We will move in on Monday (which happens to be the first day of school...so that should be interesting!  But its done! And it's beautiful.  I am so pleased with the way it turned out.

New House Update 3

Hello friends! Time for another update on our new house.  It's been about a month since our last update and lot has been accomplished!

June 6 - The seven of us spent the afternoon putting up insulation in our new garage.  This is one of the few things that the builder allows the homeowners to do ourselves.  It was hard work, but it went fairly fast with the 7 of us all working on it.  I think it took us less than 4 hours from start to finish and by doing it ourselves it saved us over $1000 (over having the builder do it).  Having the garage insulated was very important to Kevin because he spends so much time out there in his workshop.  The insulation will definitely help keep it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.

June 11 - We did our 4-way walk-through with the builder.  All of the plumbing and electrical is done, so we need to go over everything before they start sheet rocking.  For the most part, things looked pretty good!

June 12 - Just a day later, our entire garage and house was done being sheet rocked.  

June 24 - We now have textured walls and ceilings.

July 12 - We have paint and trim!  The walls and ceiling are Kwal Silver Linings and the trim is High Hyde White.  I really wanted the ceiling white, but to have them paint it was going to cost way more than we were willing to pay.  So we decided that it is one of the things that we will do ourselves at a later point. But I love the gray and how it turned out!

June 14 - We now have tile in the bathrooms, kitchen, entry, and laundry areas.  We plan to eventually put hardwood floors in most of the house, so we chose to not upgrade the tile in the areas where it would eventually be ripped out.  I wasn't thrilled with the few choices available as they were all very warm tones and our house (with the gray walls) is very cool tones.  So I chose the coolest of the 3 choices available.  But, for the bathrooms and laundry area we upgraded to this amazing dark gray tile that I LOVE!!!!!!

The builder has told us that we should be able to close in about a month.  We haven't sold our current home yet, but I am confident that it will all work out the way it is supposed to.