Everything Is Awesome!

Have you seen The Lego Movie where everything is awesome?  Well, that's what it has been like around here this weekend.  It started out on Friday at IKEA.  If you haven't bought anything from IKEA before, it's like Swedish Lego furniture for adults.  Everything comes in about 5,000 pieces and you have to fight with it until it all comes together.  Even the instructions are only pictures, just like Legos.  I am happy to report that we are now Master Builders.

We took the day off and borrowed Bob's truck.  We filled both the truck and the Highlander to the brim and hauled it all home.

And for the next 2 days we did nothing but put furniture together.  Even the kiddos got into the spirit of taking back our basement.  This is Skeeto helping Dad.

And this is Skeeto helping me :)

We focused on three rooms.  The toy room got some fun KALLAX bookshelves, a new rug, and the coloring station that Brian and I made a couple weeks ago.  So far, I love it.

The laundry room got some major organizing as well.  We put together the BESTA shelf with drawers in the center of the closet and bought some hanging rods to attach to them.  Brian has already started filling it up with our winter coats that have been banished to the office chair for the last few months.

I love the dark grey.  It looks great in here.  We even started using our much more functional laundry room this weekend.  I got to use my drying rack too!  Do you hear me?  Excited about laundry?  Everything is awesome!!!

Finally, the storage room is where the bulk of the time was spent.  We combined PAX wardrobes with BRIMNES dresser drawers.  It looks great, but they are a pain to put together.  Poor Brian worked his butt off on these and we're still not done.  We've still got two cabinets coming in the mail since they were out of stock at our local store.

I know it doesn't look like this should have taken two days, but when you have to assemble every cabinet, every drawer, screw in every screw by hand, put together cabinets and have them fall apart before your very eyes, go back to IKEA again to buy different cabinets because no matter how many times you measure, you still get it wrong (my fault, not Brian's), trust me, it takes two days.

Thankfully I had the best partner to go through this experience with.  I didn't want to kill him once and he probably only wanted to kill me two or three times.  Pretty good I'd say.

We are starting to see a light at the end of this tunnel.  Starting to move stuff back in to the basement is a BIG step on this road to recovery.  We are coming down to few enough bullets that I can at least list them:

• Finish the storage furniture including installing all the handles
• Move everything from the office and garage back into the basement
• Install all the electrical outlets and covers for the canned lights
• Install the ceiling speakers
• Hook up the plumbing for the laundry room sink
• Get wet bar cabinets and counters installed
• Finish the fireplace
• Find a contractor to do the entire bathroom
• Get a couch
• Hookup the home theater system
• Clean

Think we can do it by July?

It's A Grey Day

The grey is on the walls!  We've got dark grey in the laundry room which I think happens to be my favorite. 

Light grey in the toy room to keep it bright.

And a medium grey in the family room and storage room. 

Tomorrow, the ceiling. 

Brian also spent the evening fixing our threshold. We've basically had a painters tarp crumpled up in front of our door for the last few weeks to keep the rain out. It's even better than before we had to fix it. Great job Brian!

I can't wait until Friday. We're both taking the day off to go buy a bunch of stuff at IKEA and take our basement back!

I might be allowing myself to get excited... Maybe.... A little.

Lipstick On A Pig

The white semi-gloss went onto all the baseboards, door/window casings and doors today. I am thrilled about how this is going so far.

The breadboard in the laundry room is my favorite so far. It is going to look so clean and fresh. 

The windows are looking great too. I had a little bit of sticker shock when the paint bid came in, but looking at how good it looks, it was well worth it. It would have taken us a couple weekends what they did in a day when it comes to all that prep work. 

They may have taken it a bit overboard even.  I asked them to paint my coloring station.  I should have specified that those slots for the paper should *not* be caulked :). Oh well, we'll figure it out. 

I hope to post some pics tomorrow of grey on these walls. 

Doomsday Preppers

I love being half of a crazy Mormon couple who plans for natural disasters and actually has a bunker for the occasion.  Okay, it's not really a bunker, but it is a pretty cool storage room.

 

We decided to take our basement back one room at a time.  This weekend was the food storage room.  We vacuumed out the old coal bin area to prep it for a good coat of paint.

 

We used the masonry Killz waterproofing paint.  It's amazing how much it brightens up this tiny hole of a room.

 

Brian finished off the door quite nicely, don't you think?  After the paint was dry, we put the shelves we had in our old storage area in and brought in all our food storage, water and other doomsday items ;).

 

As part of this project, I had a hair-brained idea that Brian was willing to participate in.  I saw these drying racks on Ballard Designs.  Then I saw a DIY blog from a woman who had created one for herself and thought...we could totally do that....and make it a door.

 

So, we built a wood frame and backed it with the beadboard that is on the walls of the laundry room.  Then with the help of my nifty dowling jig.....

 

We built the drying rack!  We put it on some piano hinges and mounted it as a door.  Pretty cool, huh?  It's going to look great after it's all pained.

 

I was so pleased that I forced Brian to help me with another wood working project.  A double easel to hang on the wall of the kids' toy room.  It will have two rolls of paper that the kids will be able to pull down and tear off.  I got the idea from this blog.  Hers is only for one roll and I totally envisioned kids fighting over who gets to color.  Problem solved.

 

I can't believe how much we got done this weekend.  We had a lot of help from Grandma Sherrie as she took the kids Friday night and most of the day Saturday.  But my awesome husband is the real reason we rocked it.  I can't wait to be holed up with you in that little bunker during the zombie apocalypse.  Love you.



Slow And Steady Wins The Race

We'll I'm not sure if that is really true.  But I certainly am feeling optimistic at the progress that has been made during the last few weeks.  Firstly, Brian and I have tried our hand at a little electrical work....I know....fire hazard....But Brian has rocked it and got a light and outlet in the utility room, not to mention has wired several switches and outlets.  We feel pretty confident we can finish what needs to be done.  It is pretty awesome to be able to see in that utility room.  Good job Brian!

Next, we had a finish carpenter come and install doors, casing and baseboards.  I am loving not seeing gaping holes.  The windows are looking great.

 

I am particularly loving the windows in the family room.  The light they let in is wonderful.

 

Finally, we decided to do beadboard in the laundry room.  It will look amazing once it is painted.  And check out the laundry bins!  Aren't they cool?  We did laundry this weekend and it actually felt like we had regained a little bit of our basement back.

Here are another couple of laundry room shots.

 

Lastly, we FINALLY got our front porch done.  You may remember how awful it had gotten.  I distinctly remember using pieces of it for the eyes and buttons of a snowman we had made in the front yard.

We also figured we'd do the back path that was falling apart while we were at it.

 

Brian has really kicked butt getting contractors out here to get this done.  We should see a new fence in the next couple weeks as well as paint for the basement.  We need to get working on finding someone to do the front porch railing as well.  Then the fun really begins!!!