Gearing up again

So we're bad, bad bloggers. Although our trailer blog is pretty up to date... that's what's been taking up so much time. Now, though, the trailer is just about done and we're refreshed and renewed to begin again on big house projects.

On deck: the cellar. When we bought the house, the dingy, brown carpeted, 70's paneled cellar was considered 'finished' (a questionable designation), with a main 'great room', a bedroom, and a 3/4 bath. Pretty good stuff overall.

Then it flooded. We've since fixed the problem, between getting the sump pump fixed, re-grading the yard, and generally fixing the drainage. Oh, and we pulled out all the carpeting, paneling, walls, hung ceiling, etc. What's left is a lovely, stud-walled cellar with a grimy 3/4 bath.

The plan is to totally re- do it. Luckily, this will mostly mean re-surfacing everything. We want to put in a little kitchenette so it will be a totally pimped-out guest suite/in law apartment, expand the bathroom so the door doesn't hit the toilet (!) and add the laundry room to the new bath. Currently, laundry is done in the back-back of the basement, which has a raised floor, the oil tank, and no redeeming features - and is going to become just a storage room.

Floor will be something like epoxy paint on the concrete, and a couple of indoor-outdoor throw rugs. Walls will be plastic beadboard or tile halfway up, then probably paperless drywall to the top. Ceiling - we're going to leave the exposed beams, and then paint or whitewash the bays (underside of subfloor). I've seen this in a This Old House cottage, and it looked totally cool.

And, of course, a tiled shower in place of what now resembles the creepy phone booth in which Dr. Who flew around.

A trip to the ReStore yesterday galvanized this shower plan - we happened upon these beautiful white hex tiles, which are almost a half inch thick and look hand-cut! Right after the manager told me he'd loooove to get some tiles out of there. Loud and clear - and 5 boxes of these came home with us ($60, by the way - score!). Each box says "Mrs. Wheat's Bath". Mrs. Wheat apparently had good taste and too many tiles (or changed plans). Her loss, our gain. We'll need accent tiles (2x2, like the green one I'm auditioning here), but otherwise Operation Assemble Basement Parts is rockin'. We almost have everything we need, and will be sketching and prepping to hopefully work on it this winter.



Thanks for checking back in - hopefully the next post won't be so long.