When we were building our house 10 years ago, we were watching every nickel and dime that went into the process. One way we saved money (or, more precisely, postponed spending money) was to not have the builder finish the basement. So while we’ve been able to use the basement as a part-time kids rec room, part time movie theater, and full time storage area, it’s really not been a nice space in which to spend a lot of time. Since the kids are getting to the point where they want to have friends over (and since we think we’re closely approaching the point of J and A needing their own rooms), we pulled the trigger on getting the basement finished.
Of course, this sounds pretty straight forward, until you go back to the earlier sentence that says “full time storage area.” Once we signed the contract, we had two weeks to figure out what to do with the detritus of life we’ve accumulated in our basement over the past 10 years. And by “detritus,” you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s that stuff that is “perfectly good,” so you can’t bring yourself to throw it away. You imagine some possible use for it in the future, so you put it in the basement and never see it again.
So, first order of business was to clean out 10 years of this stuff.
We made several trips to the dump, the first of which was to give a proper burial to two old friends. One was a large rear-projection TV that was our main movie viewing machine for many years. Second was a 31″ tube TV that held a special place in my heart. When I bought my first house 20 years ago, the first item I bought to put in the house was this TV. Both of these TVs weren’t working properly any more, so it was time to put them out to pasture.
Loaded up for their final ride.
Notice the manufacture date on the tube TV. 20 years is a pretty good run.
We ran into a “Got-Junk” truck on the way to the dump. Oh the irony.
If I close my eyes, I can imagine hearing “Taps” playing in the background.
Now that we got two items out of the way, we needed to figure out what to do with the other 2,458 items in the basement. So we spent the past two weeks systematically moving every couch, chair, table, toy, rug, crib (yes, we still have two cribs. Don’t know why), light, box, gym equipment, and audio/video component out of the basement and into other parts of the house.
These are our current living room decorations.
Look for us on an upcoming episode of the show “Hoarders.”
My audio shelf in the process of being emptied. Just FYI, those two components on the bottom are a LaserDisc player and a Betamax machine. That’s just how I roll.
My homemade movie screen in its component form
When I bought this couch for my old townhouse, it had to be taken apart to get it down the stairs. I had to take it apart again to get it out of our current basement.
Finally, everything was ready to go.
So, this morning, the crew showed up to start work on framing. 6 guys descended on our house with various manly-sized tools and started to work.
The entire structure of our new basement, sitting in a neat stack on our driveway.
They tell me framing should actually be finished today. More updates to come…
Hidely Ho, Neighbors! 