What's Going On Down There?

Remember the chores I mentioned in my previous post about being home?

Like I said, the girls spent the bulk of their time, between bouts of playing, taking long naps by the wood stove. As far as they were concerned, it was a wonderful week and a half at home. Except for the last three days.

The last three days of their vacation, they were left upstairs by themselves, and to add insult to the trauma, the basement door was closed. They couldn't even see what was going on down there in their favorite play room, the one with carpet and lots of empty floor space for racing! That was upsetting, but the biggest upset about the whole situation was the man and lady were down there making all sorts of noises and it was just plain worrisome!

Now lets go back in time to November 2008, just a few weeks after we had moved into the new house. Remember this?

This was the result of a kitchen pipe developing a hairline crack and dripping for several days, seeping under the wood floor and into the basement ceiling until we came home to discover it. It was not what we expected to come home to. We pulled the ruined paint off, but I've been staring at the ugly place for two years now!

How about this one?

This was from this past June when the tornado hit Billings. This was the extent of our damage thank goodness. The wind blew so hard against the house that it forced water in around the window and ruined the wall. (I still see a monkey and bull very clearly! Can you still see them?)

Well we were down in the basement fixing these "little" issues during the last three days of our break.
"And what," you may ask, "inspired you to do this little home improvement job for Christmas, after letting it sit for that long?"

Well, after being on the market for FIVE months, we got our first offer on the house. Unfortunately, it was an absurd offer, more than 30k under our asking price with a whole lot of BS requests and demands (for instance, they wanted Malcolm's air compressor???). So we still own our house and its still on the market. However, it was just the kick in the pants we needed to get this done.

We've done some home renovations and projects, many of them, but nothing as of yet that involved sheet rock, mud, and the dust it all creates, at least not when I was around!

There really wasn't anywhere to go with the furniture. It would have been a royal pain to take it upstairs. But let me just say, if you EVER do ANYTHING with sheet rock, take ALL your things out of the room, and the surrounding rooms while your at it! That three days of home improvement...well most of the third day was just cleaning!

the ceiling on its way back to looking right



Those potential buyers were requesting the ceiling and wall be fixed professionally. And we just couldn't see our way clear to pay someone to do what Malcolm knows how to do. So we decided to fix it before the next buyer can make the same request.



Not at all how we want to spend our brief time at home, the number one reason why it hadn't been done yet!

Let's go back to the girls...

While Malcolm and I were bored, tired, and irked over wasting time on this, though it really wasn't a waste because I feel SO much better looking up at my ceiling now, the girls really had a hard time. I didn't think to utilize the camera, but wish I had. For the two and a half days it took to get the basement in a "girl safe" state, I think they resided here the entire time. I believe this because every time I opened the basement door to go upstairs for something, there they were. And over the progression of the days, they moved closer and closer to the basement door. Each time I opened the door and looked up, they'd be one step further down, until on Sunday morning when I opened the door and found Paris at my feet looking up at me, pleading to come in! It was sad.

Lots of elbow grease and many many cleaning towels later, my basement was finished and most of the sheet rock dust was cleaned up. Not a bad job, if I do say so myself!

the wall under the window

the ceiling over the couch

our basement put back together and cleaned up



We finished up around noon on Sunday, just in time for a few hours of relaxing and time to pack the truck to leave Monday morning.

We were all glad to see the project completed and have our basement living room return to normal.



I have an unrelated question. A number of blogs I read have nice large pictures. How can I have that too? Do I need to change templates or what? Please email me if you know how to do it, and put something about blogger in the subject line so I know who you are and why your emailing me. Thanks!