When I started this blog, I thought, wow, I could post daily...nah, maybe once a week with the amount of work we have going in the house. But here I am, its been over a month since my last post and Honestly, there hasn't been much work done! --- Remember my last post, and I mentioned the bathroom ? Well, yeah, that still isn't done.... the tile to finish was on back order.
So what have we been doing for the past month - ?? We have been interviewing contractors - 5 to be exact - to finish our house but mainly take over the basement.
As a side story, when interviewing for a new contractor they have a lot of questions (at least the first one did) and I learned the hard way - just tell them what happened.
So contractors 2-5 the moment they walk in the front door, I gave them a 10-15 minute "here's what happened, has happened since then, and how we plan to handle it - this go around" --- believe me they were shocked about most of what I said, but ALL thanked me many times for just being honest. I'd like to say we interviewed, but this time was A LOT different - I did the first screening for at least 4 out of the 5 contractors we spoke to.
Brian let me set up all the interviews so that I'd know who I would feel comfortable with working in our house, and in the big picture, I'd be the one making a lot of the design decisions, so we had to find someone who fit ME! And this go around we only interviewed people who were highly recommended, have worked in LR for years, and had a reputation in town (a good one). We knew we wanted to hire someone that we could go back to later on and hire them for other jobs.
Like I said, I screened, felt out the potentials and then had Brian come for the second conversation and the bid revealing should they come back with one.
So, back to the bids - Some were reserved because they knew we had fired our previous contractor (and he'd left with our money not entirely completing the work); given that reluctantly they question how much we'd already spent on the basement. So again, some were scared to give us bids because they didn't want to offend us. And probably some thought we'd never be able to afford the work that we really needed done down there.
A few gave us straight up answers and while we might have been inclined to hire one of those, we just couldn't afford it because we didn't have that much money anymore (construction loan)... However, God is good. He brought along Chuck.... Chuck is our new contractor for the house. I feel so blessed to have him for this job. He's licensed, and has all the credentials one would need to make us feel better about hiring him this go around. We even went and looked at a few houses he's worked on to reassure ourselves he's the man for the job.
That being said, I'm here today for good reason! Now that we've given Chuck the OK -we start demolition on the basement tomorrow! YA! Bright and Early Friday morning a crew is coming in to demo a few things and start framing the bedroom and bathrooms.
So I wanted to share a little preview of the entire basement. All the picture I am posting today are the current state -although it's been an evolving mess/nightmare over the last 6 months.
We still had a ton of crap down there (storage while upstairs was being worked on)...and building materials were just scattered about over the last 2-3 months. It took Brian and I a few shots at cleaning it up, but I'm happy to say we did it!
Below I'm sharing a picture of the laundry room. Yes the ceiling is already torn out, thanks to Brian!
Seriously, Can't wait for this room to be finished! I get a sink and new cabinets! Plus this room serves a dual purpose its going to be the cool spot for the dogs to hang out during the day. They will have access to the back yard via the new door being installed in this room.
Moving right along... This is a view of what will be the new bathroom and bedroom downstairs. We felt with nearly 2200 square feet in the basement, we'd be silly not to add the bed and bath. This area of the basement is rather large, what you can't see is where I'm standing will be an open concept office/ sitting area. Really looking forward to seeing this space evolve over the next few weeks!
On to.... THE MAN CAVE. AKA Brian's room.
I thought to myself this morning actually --- whether this is "Brian's Room" or not, I want to Want to go downstairs. Does that make sense? Its been a hard few months for this newly married couple -- we both dread going downstairs
1. we know its a disaster, but
2. it brings a sick feeling to your stomach when you see how much money was spent down there, and yet none of it was done.
3. the parts that were done have all been 're-done' and paid for (yes, a second time).
So that pit in my stomach when I walk downstairs, I look forward for it to go away soon~
After much debate, (actually no debate - we both agree we never wanted this done) see that cut out in our wall below --- well we're just going to take the whole wall down. Originally someone suggested to Brian that we make a bar there- that plan just wasn't meant to be. And now that the wall will be coming down I've designed him one kick ass bar! but minus that hideous hole in the wall.
This picture (below) is to a broom closet -- and actually has been the only spot in the house were we've encountered real 'water damage' - thankfully, THANKFULLY our new landscaper (Clark) and his crew came to the rescue and sealed our foundation and the pesky hole where the water was coming in! Again, thankfully this was taken care of so we can rest assured no water will damage all the new work being done in the house.
Hi Hank :)
For those of you who know, yes, I am leaving one room out of the mix for now. The media room/swimming pool...but that's because I just can't bring myself to go in there for a little bit.
And, because it's the last thing on our list to be worked on.
Below I leave you with our lovely stairwell. These stairs are the LAST of what is left of the original house. And in true fashion, they will be the last to go -
I hope you've enjoyed this little rant, narrative, rambling about the happenings in our basement. Trust me, I have a good feeling about things this go around, and know it will all be okay!
