Basement Renovation: Day 2

Day 2 was less exciting. The drywall for the back room was added and the various holes that the electrician needed were patched. Most of the other work for the day was preparing the walls to be painted. Lots more joint compound and lots of scraping doesn't lend itself to more pictures. All of the baseboards that are being replaced have now been removed and all the baseboards that are staying have been caulked.

Tomorrow is New Year's Day, so no work will be done. Painting should start Thursday so the place will look so much different. It's coming along really well.

Basement Renovation: Day 1

They arrived early Monday morning and made quick work of the demolition. The half of the wall between the utility room and the pole were the first to go. Next was the wall separating the storage room from the back closet

The light in the back was also taken down. The walls were apparently not secured very well to the existing framing so a lot of work was done to get that done. You can see all the joint compound along the dark grey walls in the post-electrician pictures.

The electricians didn't arrive until nearly 4:00 and weren't done for 3 hours. The ducts caused some issues. In the front room, one pair is not aligned and in the back room we had to go from 4 to 3. We were able to add an outlet along the new wall so we'll have an option for a floor or table lamp if it's not quite bright enough.

Basement Renovation: Day 0

The basement remodel started 30 Dec. The prior weekends involved hauling a ton of stuff upstairs and into the garage. Much thanks to the Fausts for their assistance. There's no way we could have accomplished this whole thing without them. Here's what it all looked like the night of the 29th.

Christmas Cookies

This year Jessica made many types of Christmas cookies:
Sugar
Raisin Filled
Peanut Butter (topped with kisses, Reese's cups and untopped)
Date pinwheels
Chocolate Chip
Chocolate with Peanut butter chips
Molasses

Jameson enjoyed putting sprinkles on the sugar cookies, but didn't eat very many.

Next year I think we'll concentrate just on the sugar and raisin filled as they are both our favorites. With the new, smaller cookie cutter, I think the raisin filled will be even better.

Strawberry Ice Cream

Using extra strawberries from the trifle Jessica made for Thanksgiving, and the extra heavy cream left over from the butternut squash soup, I made some strawberry ice cream. The extra cream was a little more than 2 cups but I tried to use less (and less milk) as to not overflow the ice cream maker. I still had too much. But it allowed me to really test out making two batches back-to-back. The cold cylinder stays cold enough to do it. I did add the leftover cream to the part that did not go into the first batch, so I don't know if that was the cause, or if filling the cylinder up only half way, but the second batch ended up much more solid after a shorter time. Definitely something to look into for the next batch.

Apple Pie

For Jessica's birthday I baked my first pie. I used her recipe for the crust and used the stand mixer. There were 4 Courtland apples and 3 Rome apples. I think I did a pretty good job.

Chocolate Ice Cream

First entry is about two Chocolate Ice Creams. The first was Ben's. It was good; we added chopped up mini Reese's Pieces. The second was Jerry's -- it had cocoa powder and less Baker's chocolate. We added mint M&Ms. Both Jessica and I decided that the first chocolate was better.

Here's to more desserts!