Thursday, August 31

How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

...by Brad (ghostwritten by Michele)

My wife finally convinced me to paint the basement of our house, where I work teaching percussion lessons. We had already painted the smaller of the two rooms I use last summer, so this was going to be a similar treatment to the larger room. As these "quick little projects" often go, things quickly escalated into a major project. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wouldn't be satisfied with just a coat of paint.

I've always planned on remodeling the basement, and when I say "remodel" I mean gut down to the cement and start over: 2x4 walls, decent insulation, acoustic ceiling tiles, updated wiring (the house is two-prong), new duct work to utilize our dual-zone furnace, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Why put off the inevitable with a band-aid job when we can start on the job I really want to do? I had all of last week off from work, so the timing was perfect.

I got Michele to go along with the idea and off I went. I did all of it myself, removing everything down to the cement. It took nine pickup loads to the dump to get it all out. Here are some photos:

Before


After


The boys had fun pulling nails.



All in all, not a bad way to spend my summer vacation. Now to start building it back in!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Remodeling is such a big job!!! it will look great when you are done though!! How nice of the boys to help out!!
keri

Anonymous said...

how in the world did you get those little circular orbs in the "after" photo? they're a great addition to the update! shari

Michele said...

Those little circular orbs are dust particles. The air was positively thick with dust down there for a few days.

Anonymous said...

i wish the dust particles in my house looked like disco orbs. you're so lucky.
s.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm...this makes our pull-down-the-wallpaper-in-the-bathroom job look so small. good luck with the project!
Petrea