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It wasn't a dessert, but we made some bread yesterday. It was pretty good.

Basement Renovation: Day 9

Carpet guy was here for only about 2 hours, but it looks great. Just a few paint touch ups and some finishing work on the recessed lighting and they're done.

Basement Renovation: Day 8

Thursday was an off-day for the renovation. The vinyl flooring guy wasn't available, so Day 8 is Friday. And what a day it was. They showed up a little early and apparently they brought extra help. The leveling started right away and I could hear the chipping and sanding. The liquid leveler was applied and apparently dries quicker than I expected. With the extra help they were able to finish the whole thing in one day. What a difference a nice floor makes.

Jameson enjoyed posing for the pictures. We finally let the cats down there again. They were all curious, even Samantha.

Basement Renovation: Day 7

Painting is done. It looks great down there. We asked if they could also replace the electrical and light switch plates. Those look nice. Tomorrow the flooring starts.

Blurry, but the bannister is painted white and looks a whole lot better.

More interior shots.

The only extra thing to do now is replace a few of the actual outlets that had been painted grey initially.

Basement Renovation: Day 6

Tomorrow should be the last day the painters are here. The vinyl flooring guy is scheduled for Thursday and Friday and the carpet guy will be here Saturday. It looks real nice down there now. So nice that the bannister and old outlets are looking out of place. We will be looking to fix that too.

The bannister is back up. From this picture you can't really get a taste of it's crumminess versus how nice the rest of the place is.

A little oops that needs to be fixed. This light switch was painted over so the light cannot go off.

Basement Renovation: Day 5

More painting today. For the most part the tan walls are done. There are still a few places that I see they had to spackle over and all the doors are left to do. I'm really liking it and am starting to think about how we're going to organize everything. I do not think the back closet will be big enough for all our boxed junk, and I'm not entirely sure where the litter box(es) will end up. There's no particular reason that the bar has to go back where it was, but it's not like there's a "better" place for it. If we put in a TV the FiOS drop should be along the back wall, but it could easily be snaked just past the door for the water meter (as seen on the left of the above picture).

I'd imagine that they won't do the floor until all the painting is completely done, so Thursday would seem to be the first day they can start that. I don't know how long it will take the liquid leveler to dry, so I don't see Friday as the finishing point. Not a problem; Friday was just wishful thinking on my part.

A look at the back closet with the door shut.

Looking out of the back closet.

The back closet with the opening to the crawl space.

They took the bannister off to paint. I didn't think they'd be doing that given that they wrapped it up in plastic on the first day.

Basement Renovation: Day 4

Painting started today. We're going with a tan that's "the same" as what our hallways already are. It's a different paint since they couldn't use the information from the old paint can, but the sample Jessica chose is similar enough. There's no way you can do a side-by-side comparison so it doesn't really matter if it's off a little.

It's not easy to see the exact color in these photos, but I like it. It will definitely take more than one coat given the dark grey that some of the walls started out as.

One downside to all the sanding was that a great deal of the dust floated up the stairs and into the kitchen, dining room, living room, foyer and family room. We had some plastic sheeting up to help in keeping the kitties out during the night, but it wasn't secured very well when the workers were here. On the first day when we put it up, I did notice that the plastic sheeting was blowing into the kitchen, indicating the general airflow. Jessica cleaned up a lot already, but there is still some more to do. Hopefully Jameson doesn't stay awake late into the night again.

Basement Renovation: Day 3

After a day off for New Year's Day, work resumed. The door to the back closet was installed. They had to shave a little bit off to make it fit. The ceiling is just a little too short. All of the baseboards were installed as well as the trim around the new door. I believe tomorrow should be the start of the painting so things should look a whole lot different.