More Wall Hangings in the Basement

After the push of getting the basement finished and painting my own wall art, things really died down on that front and we haven't done a single thing. Well, that's not true. We hosted friends to watch Husker games in our new basement, we had two of our nieces come for a sleepover in our new basement, and we just spent time enjoying our new basement. We just didn't do any additional decorating or arranging down there. Until now.

Every once in a while I get an email offer for 2 free 8 x 10 prints from one of the online photo sites and I always take advantage. We have some great pictures from our honeymoon and our trip to Europe and I've been selecting some of them for these larger prints. Once I pay shipping, it's usually a little over $1 for each print and I've been keeping them until I get enough to actually do something with. That day has come!

I found some incredibly cheap frames online at the dollar store. They are plastic and the case came with 24 frames, 6 of which are a silvery color I have no use for at the moment. Once shipping was added, they were about $1.50 each and I really couldn't beat that deal. So I framed the pictures and I decided to hang them on one of the walls in the basement.

This was the general orientation I came up with, laid out on the table.

Some people have a super involved process of measuring things and getting the placement just right and then tracing on a piece of paper and transferring it to the wall. Me, I just laid them out in the general orientation I wanted and then moved them to the wall. It worked for me.


Pictures on the wall! And, unless you get right up to them, you can't tell that the frames are plastic.

And the best part, I can change out pictures as needed and there's still room to add a few more framed shots on the wall if I decide to, provided I get some more coupon codes!

Photo Locations: Top row, left to right: A bicycle in the lake as a swan swims by in Lucerne, Switzerland; The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France; Yellowstone National Park. Middle row, left to right: Yellowstone National Park; The Palace of Versailles in Versailles, France, A flower at the botanical gardens in Montreal, Canada. Bottom row: The back view of the home from The Sound Of Music in Salzburg, Austria.

January Fun ('13 Edition)

Since it's the end of the first month in a new year, let's get the monthly fun 2013 edition started! Here are some of the happenings from around these parts over the past month.

Beef stir fry. This was a new recipe and it was quite tasty and easy.

We split a hog with my parents so our first taste test of the meat was some pan fried pork chops with apricot bourbon sauce on top. Pretty tasty stuff.

Drew got these two WWE DVDs during a Christmas gift exchange. I rolled my eyes. Then, I discovered them with the rest of our DVDs for the whole world to see. I'm not sure what bothered me more, that they were on display or that they were not placed on the rack in alphabetical order.

The elusive Kramer wink was finally captured by the camera!

Kramer got a new pumpkin dog after the unfortunate demise of her beloved devil dog. She attacked it with unmatched ferocity and then brought it with her to her bed to keep it in her sight at all times.

Drew built some storage shelves along the back wall in the basement. Obviously we are still in the process of getting things organized, but how lovely are those shelves?!

Oven roasted chicken. This time, I soaked the bird in some brine before putting it in the oven and then I actually stuffed some herb butter between the skin and the meat of the breast. So tasty!

Basement Wall Art

I alluded to the wall art in the basement in my last post and here's the skinny on that.

The basement living room is quite long and that's quite a bit of wall space to fill. After purchasing some other wall art for other rooms in the house, I wasn't too excited about trying to find some pieces for the basement. After all, we had just purchased new furniture and my wallet wasn't thrilled with the idea of spending more money.

Earlier this summer my mom and I took a painting class together. It was a Mother's Day present and we had a great time. I already had this idea of painting something myself so I paid careful attention to the types of paints and other supplies that we used. Then, I went out to Michael's and purchased some 16 x 20 inch canvases when they were $2.50 per canvas and used a 40% off coupon on a brush set. A few weeks after that, I bought several tubes of acrylic paint when they were $0.28 each (plus a 20% off my entire purchase coupon) and used another 40% off coupon on a can of spray lacquer.

My supplies. I'm sure that "real" artists would scoff at my paint selection, but it worked just fine for me.

Then, I got to work finding some sort of inspiration for this project because, as you may or may not know, I'm a scientist. A total type A, right-brain scientist. Creativity is not one of my strengths. So, I googled phrases like "easy canvas art" and "diy paint canvas" and looked at some pictures. These were my final inspiration choices:

Original found here.

Original found here.

I got to work and this is how it all turned out!

My less than $25 wall art. Nothing fancy, but still something fun to make.

The canvases in their position above the couch. I really like the pop of color on the wall.

As Drew said, if I get sick of them in a few months/years, I can throw them out or paint over them. I'm definitely not sick of them yet so we'll keep them for a while.

Basement Living Room

The basement is done! The basement is done! The basement is done!


The view once you come down the bottom of the stairs.

We are so, so very excited to have this project finished and to be able to use and enjoy the extra space in our house. Our starting point was outdated and cramped, but we (Drew) tore the whole thing apart and put it back together to make a great basement space. We're not completely finished down there, but the living room is pretty much done so I'll share that now.

View from behind the love seat. The door leads to the bedroom. The photobomb is courtesy of Kramer.

The view from the bedroom door. Bonus points for the quick and accurate identification of the photobomber.



Drew's recliner. It's got a high back for his tall enjoyment AND a seat massage, a back massage, and a seat warmer. The man is set!

Getting all of the furniture to arrive turned out to be quite the ordeal. The first time everything was delivered, they had a brown love seat (which we wanted) and a black couch (which we didn't want). So, they didn't even bother to unload the couch and we rescheduled another delivery date. The second delivery date came and we had a brown couch. Yeah! Except that as they started to bring it in the house, I noticed a 3 inch tear in the back. So, they loaded it back up into the truck and I scheduled another deliver time. On the third delivery date they delivered another black couch. Ug. So, the fourth time was the charm when we finally received a brown couch that was not damaged. And it is com-fy.

The long awaited couch finally arrived! More on the wall art later.

We're still working on setting up the bedroom down there. The bed that will be put in there is currently being stored at my parents' house and it's going to take some finagling to get it out. Once we get that in there, I'll share about that room.

Meanwhile, Kramer has gone from running around trying to figure things out in the basement to getting pretty comfortable down there.

Kramer just knocked the throw pillows around until she got comfortable and then it was lights out.

Also, she never really learned how to climb down a set of stairs before. I was OK with that since Daschunds are prone to back problems and it meant I always knew on which level of the house I could find her. Well, apparently the thrill of the finished basement was enough motivation for her and she figured out how to hop down the stairs. Now we have to make sure we keep an eye on her so she doesn't get down there alone!

Kramer's finally realized that her bed is not a toy...

Basement Part 3

In case you missed it and want to get caught up, you should check out the first and second installments on the basement remodel. Those installments left us with the drywall up and getting mudded.

Priming the walls.

Drew and I decided to prime the walls and ceiling as soon as the mudders were finished. There was so much dust everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) so we wanted to try and minimize that as much as we could. We figured by priming the walls and ceiling, we'd lock in whatever dust was present on the walls and that had to help. So we primed and then painted the ceiling. Drew's plan was to get the doors and trim up, unfinished, so that we could have a professional come in and stain and lacquer the wood. Since it's a basement and basements are known for their fluctuating humidity levels, Drew felt that making sure that the trim joints were sealed was a good idea. Therefore, the ceilings were painted, but the walls were left with primer on them.

Painting the ceiling.

The trim and doors were delivered in the middle of May and my love was busy every single day until the middle of July. So there were one or two Saturdays he and his dad devoted to the trim, but we weren't able to get it finished until Drew had those days off. He did a phenomenal job. That's all I need to say about that. Phenomenal. We also worked with my dad on getting the outlets and switches wired up. I installed the baffles and trim on the can lights and Drew installed the smoke detectors.

The trim is up! And so are the can lights and smoke detectors.

We also had a custom cabinet built to give us a dry bar of sorts on one end of the basement. It was built to match the door style and we were able to stain it to match the rest of the wood in the basement.

More trim! And a glimpse of the custom cabinets.

We ended up choosing mission style doors mainly due to the sizes of doors that we needed. Specifically the heights associated with the doors. The house is 60 years old so the basement is 7 feet. The soffits dip down even further and some of our doors needed to be quite a bit shorter than standard. We knew we didn't want plain doors, but we also didn't want 6 panel doors since they didn't really fit with our 1950's ranch home. I really like the two panel Roman arch top doors, but by the time you cut the door down to size, the placement of the door knob was going to look funny with the spacing of the panels on the door. We settled on a mission style door since that seemed to be the style that allowed the most flexibility. I think it was an excellent decision.

The mission style doors. See how they still look OK even when they are different heights?

We had a professional come in and stain the wood since we had a lot of wood and the lacquer is so potent. Potent might be too tame of a word. It was toxic. Burn your nose and make your eyes water toxic. We spent two nights with family so we weren't anywhere near the house for the roughest days, but it was still quite stinky when we got back home. Our painter had the store mix up a special stain color for us so that it would match the wood in the previously remodeled bathroom and it matches pretty well. However, we were a bit concerned after we got back and saw the stained wood. I thought it looked pretty yellow and Drew thought it looked pretty red. I'm sure the stain over spray and lovely yellowed tiles didn't help us get a true feel for the color.

The stained wood coupled with the over spray, coupled with the yellowed tiles made it difficult to grasp the true color.

After the wood was stained, I got to flex my home improvement muscles. Not to brag or anything, but I've got some mad painting skills. Drew doesn't really enjoy it so I took a few days off of work and took care of the painting. I should also point out that the guy who stained our wood also taped the wood off so I didn't have to tape anything down there. That was huge. While I enjoy painting, taping is not something I relish so I was happy to have him do it for me.

The bedroom with the lovely egress window.

We lucked out on the bedroom paint. My brother had just sold his house and had an extra gallon from one of the rooms. The color was a light green and we thought it would work nicely for the bedroom so he gave it to us. (Thanks bro!) For the main room, Drew and I picked a light grayish-taupe color. We had already decided that we were going with a darker carpet so we wanted to make sure the walls were light enough to keep the basement from looking too dark. So I painted everything, including the walls heading up the steps since half of the walls up the stairs were new drywall.

The main room in the basement. The walls really didn't look like the color they are until the carpet was laid. Here, I think they look white.

After the paint was finished, we had someone come in and install our carpet. The guy was someone Drew knew and he gave us a huge head's up on a carpet deal that allowed us to save some serious cash. It took him a day to install the carpet and two days later we had the furniture delivered. I'm going to leave it here because not all the furniture was delivered the first time and I'll save the big reveal for the final installment.

Carpet going down the stairs.

Kramer gives her approval of the newly carpeted basement. It's a whole other area for her to run around in!

Basement Part 2

In case you missed it, here is the first installment about the basement remodel.

When I last left the story of the basement remodel, Drew had framed the basement and we were shopping at Menards. We're still shopping at Menards, by the way. I also forgot to mention that, in addition to putting in the egress window, Drew replaced all of the other windows in the basement. They were originals and quite drafty and the new windows are very nice! He also rebuilt the stairs. Yes, rebuilt. He and his dad tore them out one day and replaced them because they were serviceable, but not done well. That's just how we roll here, we rebuild stairs.

The rebuilt stairs. They are much sturdier than the old ones and we can put a stair skirt on them when we finish.

Once the framing was in place, we set about getting the duct work in place. When the basement bathroom was being remodeled, I had some HVAC guys come out to add a vent to the bathroom. The bathroom didn't have a finished ceiling and the previous owners had just tapped into a line that went out to the addition. Since we were finishing the ceiling and adding an overhead light and fan unit, the vent needed to be moved to the wall. That bathroom vent was the only air source in the entire basement and we had one return unit near the base of the furnace. Not so efficient or comfortable, right? So the HVAC guys came out again and redid our entire house duct work. It was a large project.

New HVAC duct work.

Previously, all of the registers upstairs were on the interior walls and there was one return basically above the furnace in the kitchen. Drew had them switch the return and supply lines and he cut holes in our wood floors for the new supply lines. All of the new supply registers are under the windows to more effectively heat and cool the house. We noticed a big difference in the continuity of the temperature throughout the house. It's great!

After the duct work was completed, Drew and my dad started in on the wiring. They spent quite a bit of time fixing some of the old stuff as half of the house ended up being wired to one breaker. They were really cute together; I'd come down to offer a snack and a beverage and they'd be sort of staring at something, arms folded across their chests. One of them would say something, they'd shift their weight, the other one would say something, maybe crouch down, and then there'd be more silence. They wired the can lights for the living room, lights for the closest, and all sorts of outlets. I'm fairly certain they increased the number of breakers in the electrical box by at least 50%. They didn't start any fires and no one got zapped. Success.

Once everything was wired up, Drew and I stuffed insulation between the studs around the exterior walls. We're hoping that will make the space down there much more comfortable.

Insulation added in the walls.

Next Drew calculated how much sheetrock he'd need and we, once again, made the trip to Menards. He and Larry hung the rock over the course of 2 days. They pretty much rocked the rock... (thanks, folks, I'll be here all week!) This event marked the start of the appearance of a fine, white dust that permeated all areas of the house. I'm still trying to get rid of it all.

Drywall. Necessary, but so messy.

After the rock was up, we contracted someone to take care of the mudding. Yes, we paid someone to do some of the work on the basement. I mudded the basement bathroom and vowed never again. Drew was already quite knowledgeable on the joys of mudding so I didn't have to work too hard to get him to agree with hiring a contractor for that task. The guys came in and knocked it out in about 3 days and it looks way better than anything I could have ever done down there. The rounded corners on our soffits look amazing.

Mudded drywall.

That's it for this post. More to come soon!

Basement Part 1

Ah, the basement. Here's the back story: I bought our current house in 2006 way before I was a Mrs. and back when I knew very little about home improvement. I'm still not an expert on home improvement, but it would be safe to say I'm not as naive as I used to be either. So the basement: the eyesore of the otherwise cute little house in which we live. Where to begin?

I previously posted about the transformation of the bathroom in our basement here, and now I'm going to start sharing about the rest of the basement overhaul. We are finally to the point where we'll be finishing up in the next six weeks or so and I'm going to start posting pictures. There are a LOT of pictures.

A look at the bathroom door from inside the bedroom.

Rewind a few years. The north wall was leaning in about a half an inch and I had a system installed in the spring of 2008 to stabilize the walls and slowly pull them back into their upright position. In preparation for that installation, I had to remove the wood panelling from the walls. Yes, wood panelling. Gross, dingy, cheap wood panelling.

The north wall with one of the stabilizers and the "special" wood panelling on the right.

More pretty wood panelling in the bedroom.

So my little brother helped me remove the panelling on the north wall and we found that the previous owners had framed out the walls using 1" x 2" pieces of wood instead of the typical 2" x 4" studs that normal people use. There was no insulation and I'm not going to go into the details of the other "treasures" we have found throughout this process, but we'll just say there were great amounts of frustration, some head scratching, and maybe some not so nice words uttered under our breaths.

The closet area of the bedroom. I can't really call it a closet since the previous owners hung a curtain on a shower curtain rod and used that to close off the space.

Fast forward to last fall when we started to get our basement remodeling thoughts in order. We knew we wanted to put in an egress window so we could get an extra legal bedroom in the house. So, Drew dug a hole in the ground, had someone come out and cut through the cinder block wall, and installed a new window. It really is a lovely hole and an even lovelier window.

Drew digging me the most beautiful hole in the ground I've ever seen. Let me just repeat that: Drew dug me a hole in the ground. How I love this man!

The new window! It lets in so much light and gives us a legal bedroom in the basement.



Then in January of this year and my husband surprised me by starting on the demolition of the basement one day while I was at work. Quite a surprise! The downside is that there are no great before pictures so you'll just have to use your imagination.

What I saw when I walked in the house the day Drew started the demolition.

The bottom of the steps and one of the support beams we had to work around.

Also, even though he didn't say anything out loud, I'm pretty sure Drew had a grand old time tearing that place apart once he got started. With every panel removed, every piece of wood pulled off the wall, he got a little satisfaction in knowing he was destroying a hack job of a finish and that he would eventually get to do it right.

Pulling up the carpet to discover... gross, yellowed, peal and stick tiles.

I was honestly surprised at how quickly he got that basement space completely cleared out.

Everything is cleared out! Well, except the tools and the random piles of stuff we kept moving around the basement while we worked.

Then, he framed the walls. We went from a "sewing room," a living room, and a bedroom to a large living room and a bedroom. The sewing room was so small and it really just felt closed off down there so we got rid of it in favor of more usable space.

My three favorite guys! Drew, Frank (my pops), and Larry (Drew's dad) working hard to get things put together. Larry is no stranger to our home projects.

Drew and Larry getting a wall framed. The line on the floor is where the old wall separating the sewing room from the living room used to sit.

So that's all for now. I'll leave you with this picture of the haul from a spring shopping trip to Menard's. We saved big money.

When we went shopping this spring, this is what we brought home. And we were excited about it! I guess we really are adults now...

Sparks and Smoke

The other day I tossed some butter into the microwave to melt it and when I hit the start button, I heard a popping sound. The sound you hear if you ever accidentally put metal in the microwave. (Not that I would even know firsthand what that sounds like...) So I quickly stopped the microwave, opened the door and checked to make sure it was just my 2 tablespoons of butter in the measuring cup. It was, so I hit start again and again the popping noise. So as I was reaching to stop the microwave again, I noticed blue sparks coming from the top of the microwave where all the wires are. I called for Drew and opened the door again and took out my butter. Then, I noticed the wisps of smoke coming out of the wire area of the microwave and I started to get a little nervous. Drew arrived and at that point we both noticed the intense odor of burning something. It was awful. We quick opened the window and investigated the microwave to make sure we weren't going to have a full-on kitchen fire. Once we determined that nothing was on fire, we unplugged that thing and tried to get the smell out of the kitchen.

So, new microwave! We went looking at a couple of different places to get an idea of what we wanted and how much it was going to cost us. Ultimately, we found what we wanted at a reasonable price at Nebraska Furniture Mart and brought it home. Then came the task of removing the old microwave. That might sound like it's not a big deal, but you have to realize that everything about this house was put together in the manner that makes the least amount of sense to anyone else. We had such a fun time demolishing the basement and figuring out what people were thinking whenever anything needs to be fixed. Long story short, the old unit was mounted on the wall in an abnormal way. We had to remove the old mounting brackets, put up the new brackets, and drill a new hole in the upper cabinet so the cord could run up to the outlet. It took way longer than it should have, but most things do in this house so that wasn't a big surprise.

We have a new, quieter microwave that works and doesn't spark. I'd consider that a success story. If only I could figure out all the new features and shortcuts.

April Fun

Here are some highlights from April.

Kramer got a new toy. She crushed the squeaker and I accidentally beheaded the thing while we were playing. It lasted approximately 36 hours.

Cajun Chicken Salad.

The snowball bush started to look beautiful.



And then they REALLY looked amazing.

And then they looked not so amazing.



Lilacs looked and smelled amazing both in the backyard and in the house.

Meat Loaf in the Slow Cooker. Not the best, but now I can adapt other recipes for the slow cooker and save oven time and not heat up the house in the summer.

 

The roses started to bloom!

My little brother got hitched.

We primed the basement. And grafiftied.