shutterboo

So if you’ve been hanging out with le blog for about a year now, you’re aware that the hubs is fixing up our basement.  He’s tackling it himself, with help from friends when he asks or they’re bored.  It’s been a slow process.  Too slow for me.  I thought the main room would be done this weekend.  I thought wrong.  But it’s starting to shape up.

Drywall is up and painted.  Trim work has been laid.  The floor is down.  Columns have been custom crafted to hide the plumbing we need access to.  The movie stuff is set up and ready for my viewing.

So what’s the hold up, you ask?  That’d be the bar.

The hubs has made this bar himself.  Built it from scratch.  I helped him rip the boards.  I also whined and screamed and whined some more when I helped him.  (I don’t like power tools.  I hate saws.)  It’s a nice bar.  But there’s about five more rounds of staining and the rail needs to be installed.  I can’t wait for my house to smell like the inside of a chemical plant again.  Because it’s totally awesome [and the whole family becomes glass-eyed].

Eventually.  It will be finished some time down the road.  My fingers are crossed that it’s by December.  Because I know he isn’t going to work on the broken shower in the master bathroom until he finishes this.  And I’d kind of like to have my bathroom back in the morning.

Months and months ago, way back in July when I first started shutterboo, I wrote about the hubs’ Extreme Makeover: Dungeon Edition.  He is taking on the basement one drywall screw at a time.

He “started” this project in December 2008, over his holiday break.  All he really did was buy a lot of stuff, store it in the basement and then hang three sheets of drywall.

Then in June 2009, he got the itch to get crackin.  The man hung 25 sheets of drywall in 2 days.  Before I knew it, the main room of the basement had drywall everywhere.  And mud everywhere.  And drywall dust everywhere (it’s still everywhere actually).  And then he primed.  And I documented it all here and here because I was so proud of all of the work he’d done.  The hubs  was supposed to go back and fix all his mudding mistakes after this… but he didn’t.

That’s when I decided I didn’t support his next decision so I wasn’t going to write about it.  He painted the walls with color.  Why?  I have no idea.  Maybe to see how it looked?  Maybe to have it look more like a room  before our big 4th of July party?  I’ve known this man for nine years and still have no idea how he processes things.  But I didn’t write about it.   Because I didn’t want to.

And I still don’t.  I really don’t even want to write about what he did after that because I think it was silly.  But at the same time I’m excited.  Does that make any sense?  No?  OK, I’ll just show you.

The hubs laid flooring.  Not smart considered the drywall still needs more mudding and sanding and priming and painting but it looks so pretty.  So so so so pretty.  Pretty enough to dance on.  So I did.  We need to have another dance party, sheMohn – it’s an entirely different experience on this floor.

It’s beginning to look like a real room.  Or a bowling alley.  I did include notes on my photos so you should really go to flickr and read those.  Just because.

This part, “the bar”, will be finished last.  The hubs did pick out some beautiful wood that he plans to finish himself as the bar top.  Don’t worry, he knows how to do this.  My father-in-law taught him the Jedi-wood-ways.  But right now it’s housing all of the crap he had on the floor where the wood is now.  Again – don’t understand how he thinks.

He has a personal goal to get this long room fully completed before the New Year.  Do I think he can do it?  Yes, I think he can.  Do I think he will do it?  That’s a trick question.

We shall see how the mystery unfolds.

So the hubs got the bug and was making headway with the rathskeller makeover.  Keep in mind that everything on this post happened within 2 days. 

The hubs asked me to help him relocate the ginormous pile of drywall to another “room” in the basement.  I said I’d help but I didn’t really want to; I’d already failed helping him get a piece on the drywall lift.  But when I walked downstairs, I saw the drywall fairies visited and not only moved the entire stack but put up the few remaining pieces on the wall!  No more concrete and studs but now A Room.

I’d like to confess that while I dreaded moving drywall, I did help mud.  I didn’t do a fantastic job and it felt as though my left arm would grow freakishly large like Popeye’s after holding the heavy mud-pan, but I helped. 

Mike had to play with his new prized possession (for the moment) after completing the walls: a projector.

I was hesitant (like I am with all of the Great Ideas the man comes up with) but I was pleasantly surprised when we turned it on because it looked like this:

This wall is not painted and it looked glorious.  Planet Earth on BluRay looks glorious everywhere but seeing it in 106″ was like being in a dream.  And then I prayed: Dear God, it’s me, Brooke.  Please let UofL have a better football season.  Please?  I promise to put the dishes in the dishwasher everyday if you do this one thing for me.

Over the next couple days, the hubs proceeded to sand every flat surface in The Room and in turn covered every other surface in the basement with drywall dust.  It was icky.  And it didn’t all stay in le caveau.

 The Reverend (affectionately called Rev) came over to do man work and helped the hubs wipe down walls and prime.  And I’m glad Rev did come because he’s a heck of a painter (Mike, not so much…you should have seen his hands) and made it move really fast. 

The only drawback: Rev Radio.  I have Brooke Radio where I sing songs that just pop into my head.  But Rev Radio has songs that you can’t get out of your head.  Like Rock the Boat, Sweet Caroline, Purple Rain.  But when he left, The Room looked like this:

It still needs some TLC and extra mud but we are on our way to having extra partying living space, people.  I’m amazed by the hubs hard work, the Handy He-Man that he is.  So after it dried, we had to test the prized possession again.

Did you hear the angels sing too?  I cannot WAIT to use this bad dog for movie nights, game nights, UFC nights…it’s going to be effing awesome.  So hear me now, Kragthorpe: put out or get out.  For reals.

Update: For those of you who partook in RockBand at our 4th of July party know that Mike has since set up the screen and painted the walls with color.  I refuse to post pictures of that because it’s coming down so that we can finish making the walls look better.  But it served its purpose so that we could completely rock out with plastic wanna-be-instruments.

We love having people over and I like to think that people love coming over.  So in an attempt to make our partying living space larger, the hubs began Project Basement at the end of 2008.  And then he stalled it for 5 months and it wasn’t because it’s cold in the basement.  Home improvements can get to the best of us sometimes.  But June rolled around and he caught the basement bug and things began to change.  Fast.

At the beginning of June, Mike went from having 6 pieces of drywall hung to something like 25… in 2 days.  Bob the Builder returned, folks!  This is when I decided I had to start documenting the changes because he was on a roll.

And though it doesn’t look like much right now, a small media area and a bar are in the works.  Alan, I know you recommend drawing our plans in Autocad but sometimes when the bug bites, you just have to go with the flow!

Fast forward about a week and the man has built a bar.  I really think it will end up being a great bar because Mike found some beautiful birch for the bar top.  Sorry to disappoint, Flannigan’s, but we plan to belly up to this bar.

Fast forward a few more days and WHAM! there’s a wall behind the bar.  Time travel another week and BOOM! there’s drywall on almost every surface!  I don’t know how the hubs did it, but he was a machine.  I heart my engineer.

Our dungeon turned into a room in a matter of  2½ weeks.  The hubs has done a fantastic job and I’m impressed with all of the work he’s done. *tear* 

Tomorrow I plan to post the remaining pictures I have of our extreme makeover and then it’s just updating when the rathskeller changes.  So y’all come back, ya hear.