before and in-the-middle-of...

renovations. Our basement is a mess, but not for long, thanks to Matt's awesome Uncle and his brother, Chris, with his plumbing expertise. So here are a few pics...okay, a lot of pics, of some before's and during's:

The Hallway before Now: with a closet...YAY for storage!
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Before: the BEAST...that would be that despicable mess of a fuse box on the wall, and the ugly utility stuff. That white pipe, that's the outdoor sprinkler system that went THROUGH our basement ceiling.

Now: the sprinkler pipes have been removed and we have all of our electric updated. oh yeah, and a wall to hide the ugly utilities. It's not a full wall. I didn't want to deal with trying to figure out how to put a door in this awkward spot and the pipes stand out from the wall at least a foot. ***

Before: our old place to store all the crap we collected and where we hung some of our laundry.

Now: the second bathroom now resides...and it has been a pain in the behind all around with ducting that hangs low and some plumbing issues needing to be addressed. But it's coming together thanks to the pro's who know what they are doing.

And our dryer died during all of this too. Luckily, we have connections and it was replaced the next day. Our furnace had decided to take the past two weekends off and we had all been sleeping in one room with a space heater. I guess with all the dust from construction, the heat sensor had enough. Again, family came to the rescue to fix it...Thanks Chris!

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Before: the storage under the stairs.

Now: the bathroom wall. We opened up the wall on the other side of the stairs in the new storage room. It was really, really nice not to have to move all of those boxes. The dark concrete on the floor is where the new plumbing was connected for the toilet. We REALLY, REALLY need a second bathroom.

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Before: The family room and storage room. Now: with the walls up and painted and doors. That's Jeff over in the corner, he's our painter friend who does a really, really good job.

and this is the room after the paint (we chose the color STONE by Ralph Lauren and it's a really awesome, calming color. LOVE IT!) We cut an opening from the hallway into this room because the hallway is so narrow. We wanted to open up the space and couldn't widen the entrance to this room. It really like how it turned out.Here is the before of the other end of this huge room.

And how it looked before being painted. The window on the end, we will eventually egress.

We can't wait to use this space. It will be like adding almost double what we have upstairs, which isn't big, so it will be nice to have another place for the kids to play and not drive me nuts. Brinley had been hoarding all the carpet samples we bring home. She thinks they feel nice on her feet and isn't fond of the wood floors we have.

By the end of next week, we hope to start putting windows and doors in...it's all so exciting.

love rocks!

I have always loved homemade valentines. Brinley loves them too. I have found some really creative and fun valentines on the web. I borrowed some of the ideas I found and changed them up a bit to fit what I wanted to do. We took advantage of our chalkboard wall and made some really fun valentines. The best part of these is that they are super easy and cheap. Had them printed in 1 hour. Brinley had seen some decoration at school that said 'love rocks' and wanted her bubble to say just that.

Can I just tell you how much fun our chalk board wall has been. We love it! Brinley practices her spelling words on it...makes homework a lot more interesting.The hardest part was cutting out the holes to thread the bag through. If I hadn't alread had the bags done, I would have used something to twist close.

Brinley loved them and is excited to give them out at school today. We don't have school tomorrow or Monday, so the whole school gets to celebrate Valentine's Day by going roller skating all day and then have class parties in the afternoon when they get back.

career concert

Last week Brinley had a career concert at school. For a few weeks before the concert, they had parents come in and tell the kids what they do and why its important to go to school and learn math and reading, etc. I signed Matt up to come and talk about cell phones and being able to take them apart to fix them. They gave him the title of "phone man". He gave them all some little CricKet flask light. Brinley has come home with books, toothbrushes, chocolate ears, candy, stickers, a few Zumba moves (she goes to school with the Y's Zumba instructors daughter), pencils, etc.

THEY LOVED IT!

All of the children were asked to wear a costume to school dressed as what they want to be when they grow up. There were police men, soldiers, bakers and cooks, teachers, basketball players and even a Willy Wonka. Brinley has always, always wanted to be...

an ice cream store worker.

I kinda nudged her to maybe want to own her own ice cream shop someday. She came up with the name and picked the colors of the stripes. I made her costume out of butcher paper, markers and a bit of felt...easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
She loved it.

The night of the concert, all the kids in her class dressed up in their costumes. During one of the songs, they walked the "runway" so they could show everyone their someday careers. It was adorable. They all did such a good job.

Last Friday, they had got to stand up in front of the class, dressed in their costumes and tell about what they do. Brinley had made up ice cream flavors that were going to be in her shop 'strawnana' (strawberry banana) and 'huckleberry lava' (not sure what exactly would be in it other than huckleberries, but she liked the name).

I love her class and her teacker. So, so glad I put her in the SPICE Program.

basement

Our basement is starting to look like a lot like a room and not a basement anymore.

It's exciting.

I will finally have a storage room and we will all appreciate the second bathroom. We've had a few issues with the electrical, as in placing the sprinkler system (which goes THROUGH our house) directly in front of our old school fuse boxes and puting a light in the air intake...idiots. Those things will be fixed and we will be upgrading our fuse boxes. We are pulling out our sprinkler system entirely for now and when we get the yard finished, replace it.
It's so much farther along than this now. But I haven't taken a picture of it in the last two days.
Our windows came in today...YAY! They screwed up and ordered the wrong tint, so they don't qualify for the rebates. However, they we're awesome enough to pay us back what we would have gotten from Avista. We already got an awesome deal on them, so now we got an even awesomer deal on them. We will start replacing those next week.
We picked out carpet , door and paint yesterday.
Can't wait to see it all done.