Project Complete...Almost

After nearly six weeks of living with the contents of our basement in our upstairs...our basement remodel is done..almost.

When there was threats of south Bismarck flooding, Brad moved all our stuff upstairs, just in case. Then, when the floodwaters receded, rather than move our belongings back, we decided this was the perfect time to remodel the basement.

Our house was a Trading Spaces house before we bought it, and the previous owners hadn't changed a thing. If you're familiar with the show, you know the designer Hildi. She is over the top. Our walls were covered with purple ostrich fabric from Paris. Papers were hung from the ceiling to the top of the ledge with S hooks. Those came down right away, but we didn't have time to deal with the rest of the Trading Spaces decor at that time.

Finally dealing with it turned out to be a much bigger project than we expected. We had to tear out the corner cabinent (that only took a few minutes), pull down the fabric (that wasn't hard either, but there were THOUSANDS of staples left in the walls...all of which had to be pulled out one by one), and the laminate wood on the ledge had to come down. That meant new sheetrock, texturing and paint. Fortunately, Brad is a handy guy, and has handy friends. Brian and Travis helped with the texturing, Jamie and Kai did the painting. I have no idea how we will ever repay them.

We are still not done. We are still arguing about where to put the tv, so the temporary solution is the tv on an old library table, which isn't big enough to hold the dvd player and cable box...so those are being held on a folding chair. Let me point out, Brad picked out the folding chair....we do have nicer chairs...I'm not sure why he picked this one. But I guess it could be worse...they could be housed on top of a case of empty beer bottles, or a milk crate.

But I am happy with the progress so far. And it's done enough for a big birthday bash today!