Staired and Floored...

It has been a while since the last post to the Bungalow Blog and a lot has happened here on Beacon Hill. At our last check in we were still working on the basement and I am pleased to report that this project still has a modicum of steam behind it. Our upstairs living room furniture has been replaced and relocated to the basement so there are comfortable places to sit on both floors now. We infilled the hardwood floor between the kitchen and the pantry (old closet) as well as replaced the "temporary" OSB stair treads with fir to match the other stairs in the house. We've spent the last week making all this happen and then spent a portion of this weekend putting the finish on. This has been the plan for a while but had the unfortunate timing of happening when the temperature nears 90 degrees here in Seattle. Our basement is easily 20 degrees cooler than it is outside and can currently only be reached through a window. Great timing. 

We've also been enjoying the fruits of our labor outdoors as summer has certainly arrived here. Our cherries have come in and mostly been consumed, our lettuce and beets are still going strong and the recent heat has been doing great things for our tomatoes, beans, squash and cucumbers. Laura has been coming up with creative recipes to use up all of this produce with much success as I'm certainly eating more beet greens than I would if left to my own devices. I've hosted two home brewing sessions and entered the Georgetown Power Tool Drag Races (neighbor Chelsy and I here) to keep myself occupied.

In other news there is a competing blog in Laura's family that is chronicling the construction of her sister Sarah, BIL Ryan and nephew Baxter's new home in Nashville Tennessee. Another Bungalow Blog details how quickly things can happen on a house when you leave it to the professionals.  

Tread installation in progress

Finished landing between pantry and kitchen

Dual sparge tower in use on pre-Father's Day brew session

A big leap on the project front

Justin and I have been busy finishing projects these last few weeks and not blogging much about it so this is going to be a lot of progress in a single post.

In early March, we got busy sanding and painting the doors that we found at Second Use, a local salvage store. This store has been a gold mine for us in the door arena...we really scored some awesome deals. Justin got a good buy from Compton Lumber for building the door frames for these doors and prepping for the door hardware.

Here's the man making sure he has a smooth finish.

These doors really finish the room and hiding all of our storage.

Our future bathroom is to the left and our workshop to the right.

This week, I stayed home from work to host the carpet installers. This took a couple of hours and voila! we had a finished space.

Tink is making herself comfortable. The room was so different with a concrete floor but now looks cozy and complete...minus the furniture.

 Another view. Check out those curves.

This weekend was delightful. We had sunny weather--enough for short sleeves and the first outdoor bicycle ride of the season.  Justin and I spent some quality time cleaning up the yard and filling up the yard waste bin.

 We redid this corner with coniferous shrubs that should be a better fit for the space. The previous plants had outgrown the plot.

The side garden is coming in nicely.

Trimmed out

Justin and I have been doing a lot of basement work over the last few weeks but the work is the kind that is hard to see in photos. Mostly we've been installing baseboard trim, patching scrapes and dents in the walls and getting things ready to add door casing. We took our bargain doors to the lumberyard last week to have frames built and this weekend we installed the frames. Justin picked up 200+ linear feet of door casing which we have been busy painting. Together we painted and installed all of the baseboard trim two weekends ago and I caulked and filled all of the holes. Once we have the rest of the trim up, we can go back around and put a final coat of paint on everything to give it a nice finished look.

In other news, we got a few carpet samples and while we have a general color family (taupe), we haven't found a style we're so keen on yet.

We installed 3 door frames and prepped them with paint. The doors need to be sanded and painted too.

Here's the door casing trim, in the middle of their paint job.

And while I made dinner, Justin cut the countertop for my new desk/crafting station.

Checked off

We've been really busy with the basement these last few weekends. There really hasn't been much play-time despite record snowfalls in the mountains.

Justin and I have been dutifully checking items off the to-do list. We've painted all the walls and ceiling, stored all of our random stuff in permanent locations, installed all of the electrical receptacles and breakers, and laid on the final shiny coat of floor finish. And, we've made a final run to the dump to drop off the final pile of construction debris so Justin can park in the garage.

Our most recent accomplishment is the shiny blue floor; wrapped up on Inauguration Day.

Here's a view from where the washer usually sits. You can see half of our giant beer making storage closet which we also completed in the last few weeks.

Happy New Year

The new year has come and it has brought shelves! This weekend was all about organizing and storing stuff that has been crammed into the nooks and crannies of our spare rooms and garage. We have lots of photos of stuff to share. Here's a little chronology of our long weekend:

• Final coat of polyurethane on the floor
• Trim out storage room; no worries about caulk and paint...it's a storage room.
• Build first two of three shelving units in storage room
• Wipe down and move all of our outdoor/active gear onto these shelves
• Build shelves in closet of tool room and move all paint and adhesives into tool room
• Build workbench in tool room
• Move all of Justin's tools and hardware/supplies into tool room
• Build third shelf in storage room and store the remaining boxes of stuff
• Relocate can light in living room; mud and tape hole
• Paint closet in laundry room
• Build shelving for spare bedroom closet
• Build shelving for new pantry space and move a few goodies into this space

Here are the photos of our efforts:

Oops...we measured wrong. 

New shelves, stocked with all of our stuff and even some room to spare for future expansion. Note the trim and shiny blue floor.

 The tool room, outfit with a new workbench and tools! We still need trim in here but are planning to pre-paint it before nailing it to the wall.

The spare bedroom's new closet shelving. 

Our cool blue pantry with all of my canned goods and cookbooks and assorted beverages. I have a few ideas for how to tart it up a bit.