Space: The Final Frontier

These are the voyages of the starship Natalie, her continuing mission...to finish the basement.

I've been waiting for this day since we moved into this house. The day I could call out those magical words, "Boys! Go down in the basement!" For some unknown reason, they did not want to go down there until it was finished. They could have skate-boarded around on the cement, played with sidewalk chalk, made a secret hideout, the possibilities were endless. Now that there's brand new carpet, they're excited to boldly go where no one has gone before...

It's a perfect play area, because it's empty space. After essentially keeping "the basement guy" on retainer for several months, we won't be able to afford furniture for quite awhile. BUT--who needs furniture when you have bins! Take a look at my new storage room:

One side is for bins, the other is for food storage. Look at the beautiful shelves! Sometimes I go down there and just stand and stare. I think I'm in love.

Oh, and here's the bathroom. It's now the nicest bathroom in the house and no one ever uses it. Not that I mind. I don't need another bathroom to keep clean.

And here's the new guest room. It turned out more spacious than I ever thought it would be.

And the final final frontier--the little "kitchenette", which will be used for art projects and maybe eventually snacks (someday when food is allowed in the basement).

So, TA-DA! Our finished basement. So exciting!

Nerve Gas

My nerves are shot. I think my body has accumulated a near-toxic level of mental nerve gas. For those who don't read the espionage genre, here's a quick blurb on nerve gas:

Nerve gas causes a chain reaction that allows neural impulses to be continually transmitted, causing muscles to contract, organs to produce chemicals, etc. If neural impulses are not blocked after the initial transfer, those muscles and organs will not be able to relax until eventually...one of the effects kills the victim.

I'm starting to feel like I have just such an overload in progress.

A few days ago, our water was turned off for the day while the plumbing in our basement was being done. We managed to not use the bathroom for about 7 hours (though the boys--not including Eric--did relieve themselves in the woods, Eric was at work--or maybe he would have done the same, and Stephanie is still in diapers, so really, it was just me). I also managed to cook dinner without having the water on. I know, you're thinking, "Most people would have ordered out." Aren't you impressed? Well we don't have any spare change right now while we're paying for the basement.

Later that day, the air conditioner quit working. Just FYI, our first 3 days of fall have all been in the 90s. It was too late to get anyone to come look at it that day.

The next day, our electricity was off for almost the entire day while we had a new fuse box installed and inspected. This meant no one could come look at the A/C then either. Again, I managed to cook dinner instead of ordering something.

Somewhere in the middle of this, my basement guy said something in passing about a new building code that required better grounding of the water main, because if something or other happens to touch it while someone in the house is in the tub or taking a shower, they will be electrocuted. "That's it," I thought. "From now on we'll just have to hose the kids off. No more baths at our house. Too risky." (He tells me it's really nothing to worry about, but I just couldn't bring myself to put them in the tub last night and risk frying them. So they still stink--though, interestingly enough, that same day they hosed themselves off without permission at a neighbor's house, while wearing their nice shoes, no less.)

Today, a guy came to look at the A/C. He tweaked some things and fiddled around in there and got it going again. It stopped working less than 2 hours later. Did I mention we had record-breaking heat today? 98F! And at 6:20pm, I still entered my 85-degree kitchen and cooked dinner.

Amongst all this, I am still homeschooling (it feels like I'm running an independent-study program) and making hourly decisions on various aspects of my basement. Now that the whining is done, I should point out how thankful I am to be able to finish the basement right now. I remain convinced that, when it's all over, it will have been worth it. For the first week, Daniel asked me every day, "Is the basment done yet?" He thinks they are way behind schedule.

I think what I need is a night out... and a long weekend.

Plumbing the Depths

This is the current state of our basement. You could consider this the "before" photo, though I assure you the true "before" photo would reveal a much less disastrous scene. We are in the process of finishing our basement. I say that like we are personally doing some of the work involved. We are not. Unless you count choosing doors and windows and deciding where light switches and closets go as work.

We vibrated for much of the day yesterday while a couple of men with jackhammers and cement saws created the piles of rubble depicted above. The trenches they created will become the major plumbing works of our soon-to-be wonderful basement. Hence the title of this post. Finishing our basement (or at least paying someone else to finish it) is plumbing the depths of our patience, our noise endurance, and certainly our budget. Hopefully, the "after" photo will justify all the means. Yes, I know it would save us a lot of money if we did at least some of the work ourselves, but as Eric says, we want it to look good. What do you think so far?