3 weeks into the Basement Project, 3 more days (hopefully) to go!
Of
course the 3 weeks and 3 days refers to the work that we're paying to
have done, not the painting, carpet, moving of furniture, hanging of
art....But let's not dwell on what's ahead right now, rather focus on
all the progress this past week.
Plastering
Not to be
confused with 'Plasterhead', the plasterers arrived Monday morning.
They taped, the mudded, they
plastered.
At the end of Day 1, they left a
big, scary mess. I made the mistake of peeking, even though our
carpenter told me not to.
Luckily by the time they left the
next afternoon, everything was cleaned up and the walls had gone from
gray drywall boards to plastered masterpieces.
They even got rid of the hideous
texture on the stairwell walls. Hurray! Next year maybe we'll have
them back to get rid of the fish scale pattern on our ceilings...
Trim
& Doorways
After the plasterers did their thing, baseboard
trim started to go up.
Doorways were framed in and one
door was hung. By design, the door to the laundry room was left off.
We have some space issues (i.e. the washing machine is in the way of
where a door would swing) so for the time being I will be sewing a
beautiful lined drapery to hang there instead.
A nice way to bring some fabric
into the space ;-) Perhaps next year (or the year after...) we will
purchase a stackable washer & dryer and hang our door. Or not.
Stairway
After
the plasterers smoothed out the stairway wall texture, the old-new
railing and newel post were able to be installed. The railing is
re-used from what we had there before and the newel post (chopped off at
the bottom) is a swap pile find.
We changed the brackets from
shiny brass to brushed nickel and once it's all painted, it's going to
be mucho spiffy. I hope.
Closet
The closet really came
together this week. It was plastered, got an energy efficient light and
3 built in shelves.
The bi-fold doors were also
hung, though the knobs were intentionally left off. I'm hoping to visit
Anthropologie sometime in the next few days to pick out something
special. Or Lowe's.
Electrical
One thing
that didn't get done this week was the dropped ceiling. In fact, it's
the last major piece of the project. The dude that was lined up to do
it went m.i.a. , turns out he was in the hospital due to some sort of
asthma flare up. He's fine but he won't be putting in our ceiling. We
think we have someone lined up for Tuesday. Fingers crossed. Anyway,
because the ceiling didn't get done, our electrician wasn't able to
finish up. He did come and put in all the receptacles and a few lights
that are in the sections of ceiling that are drywalled. As soon as the
ceiling is in, he'll be back to install the recessed lighting and pretty
up the outlets and switches. 'Pretty up', that's an electrical term...
Built-In
Much
progress was made on the built in cabinet and shelving under the new
staircase. I'm loving the beadboard backing, happy that our carpenter
convinced me to use the high quality beadboard rather than the thin,
flimsy sheets they have at Lowe's.
Once I get in there with paint
and accessories, I'm planning on the shelf brackets sort of
disappearing. They still have to build and install the doors on the
cabinet but as you can see, Cuyler's secret lair will still be
accessible ;-)
It's looking quite nice
down there and I'm getting excited at the prospect of having 2 more
{real} rooms in our house. I'm having a bit of a paint dilemma: leave
the studio all white and fill it up with colorful art and objects or
paint the walls a shade of pale robin's egg blue that I love? I'm
leaning toward white. In the family room area I'm going for a vintage
beachy/coastal vibe and planning on using blues and greens with some
brown thrown in (reminiscent of sand and some of our existing furniture
that I have to work with is brown or beige). Not sure about the wall
color in there yet either.
Luckily I'll have plenty of time to
ponder as I roll primer on 500+ sq ft of newly plastered walls.
