Basement Construction Has Started!

Before I get to regular blogging, I just wanted to put up this image as this is a day we will never forget. It's crazy to think I will have to teach Max when he is old enough about terrorism and what happened on this day 13 years ago. I will never forget where I was and the moments watching it unfold on the news. I can't even fathom what it was like for the people that were there or the first responders and family. I am so thankful for our country and the men and women who work day and night to make us safe in this country. Thank  you. 

I know I've been MIA from the blog for a while. I think I have some good reasons. We took a quick trip to the beach, started work on the basement, I went back to work, my computer decided it was too full to hold anymore photos/wouldn't turn on and we were just trying to survive these first weeks back in this new groove. I got my computer to turn on and put my photos in iphoto, but I am so full that I can not load them into blogger without it taking 8 years. We are in the process of transferring my photos to clear room so I hope to be back up and running in a few days.

Construction on the basement started on August 25th, 2014. Since David is studying most nights/weekends we are contracting most the work out except for plumbing and electrical which David, my cousin, his brother and brother in-law have been working a few weekends on already. I don't even know what all was going on with David and Bill, but it involved Jack Hammers and concrete. This week we had to put our contractor on hold so we could finish electrical work this weekend. The original timeline was around 4 weeks, and they always say to double it and I definitely think that'll be more accurate since we are having to slow it down.

Here is the floor plan drawing David did for us. Rooms #2 and #3 will go unfinished. #2 is our storage of decorations and boxes. Room #3 is David's workshop.

You can see the color coded areas that indicate existing wall and new walls. The steps are going to be the first major change. We are turning them instead of having them go straight down into what will newly be Mom's bathroom. We are turning them to give her more room.

Room #1 is going to be our craft room/office area/extra bedroom with a full closet and new window we had installed.

Room #4 is mom's bathroom with a walk in shower, vanity and toilet.
Room #5 is moms spacious bedroom with walk-in closet. She will have a stackable washer/dryer to the right in that nook in the closet. We added 4 feet to her room space by turning the steps and adding a beam (that pink line you see so her room bumps out to the new wall.

Room #6 is the main big open area as you can tell. There are fantastic bay windows (which eventually David will be making built in toy storage/seating along the window), a door to the lower level deck and more windows. One of the main reasons we loved this house so much was because of the huge potential of our day light/walk out basement with windows along the whole back. It truly doesn't feel like a basement especially with 10ft ceilings. We are using this space as the playroom, living room/tv area and kitchen will be on the right side wall. We were going to do kitchen as a phase 2 plan due to costs, but we came across an amazing deal for kitchen cabinets, granite counters, oven, stove top, dishwasher all for $350! This couple from his parents neighborhood posted on their classifieds that they were getting a new kitchen and didn't want their old one to go to waste. Well, we acted fast and looks like we will get our kitchen after all! The island/bar will probably come later as we needed a bigger piece of granite than they had so we will be doing something else for that area. The cabinets are our exact cabinets we have in our main kitchen, very well built. We might have our guy paint them just so we don't have the exact same kitchen down. This is going to be so nice for mom and for parties!

Room #7 isn't really a room, we just had the AC/water heater area moved to give room for our kitchen.

Room #8 is the half bath that we are adding underneath the steps/in between the play room and David's work room. I wanted to add this so we didn't all have to use mom's bathroom when we had people over or when the kids are playing.

We have flooring, the wainscoting plan, paint colors, tile and most of the fun decorative side of things picked out. I'll share at a later date with before and during pictures. We are about 30% complete so far I'd say. Let's talk numbers. We don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to finish our basement with so I wanted to budget around $20,000 (the frugal side of me), but that was not possible due to subbing out.  Heck, our new AC unit work is $7k of this right out the get go. The rest is supplies and our main contractor for framing, insulation, dry wall, floor install, paint and trim work (well worth it). I think we will be much happier with the faster timeline of subbing most the work out. Our new budget is $26k not including any kitchen work and we are going to go over that already. We will slowly be adding in decorative touches like doors an area rug, toy storage, lighting/fans etc as we are already over budget until we save more. We are adding a little over 1,000 sf of finished space downstairs so it's well worth the cost, but still hard to pay up. There are so many things to think about from where exactly to put each recessed light and outlet switch that I wasn't expecting. I'll be glad when it's done, but I'm nervous I forgot something!