Adventures in Home Improvement

So my initial blogging endeavor didn't get enough momentum going but I'm still an avid lover of blogs and lately I've been loving Young House Love. They've inspired me to start blogging again and to get me motivated to finally fix up our house after living here for so many years! Really DIY home improvement is crafting on steroids. I've spent so much money on craft supplies, I realize I need to improve my rate of return on my investment so I'm channeling my energies toward fixing up our home.

We have one huge project going on and that's finishing our basement. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the totally unfinished product but here's after all the framing is done. My husband's super handy Uncle Steve, did the framing for us and we are pleased with the results. Uncle Steve did a great job framing out the basement and working around all the little imperfections of our house.





Now that we've embarked on this project, we realized a few benefits of having the builder finish the basement:

1) Cost: If we had the builder finish the basement when we initial were designing the house the cost would have been rolled up into our mortgage. As it is now, we are having to pay large sums of money to get the framing, plumbing, electrical, etc... It really adds up even with us acting as our own general contractor.

2) Schedule: The builder would have done it faster and we would have had use of the space for the last, oh 10+ years!

3) Resources: A very large chunk of my time is spent on this project. From scheduling the various trades people and making arrangements to work from home, to researching bathroom fixtures that are affordable but that both DH and I like.

However, there are definitely some nice benefits to doing the basement on our own:

1) I get an awesome home office: we're planning large french doors on my huge den/home office/study to be. In addition to pretty doors, I'm going to have two nice sized walk in closets again with double doors. I'm a pack rat (as my husband can attest to) and so these nice size closets are a must for me.

2) Bathroom we will love: Yes, I'm spending entire Friday and Saturday nights studying up on different types of toilets (elongated or round? 12" rough in vs 14"? left or right handed trip lever?). Sometimes just having two choices is a good thing. With some patience, we finally did decided on a toilet, tub and sink that I'm excited about and my husband is happy with. Something must be wrong with me for being excited about the toilet :-).

This space is going to be awesome! I can't wait for it to be finished!