We're hanging out in the basement!

There is definitely still work to be done, but let's just take a look at these photos of progress!

shelves are back up in the laundry room!

 Alex helped me move in the shelves last Monday and I worked all that night to fill them up with what we'd been storing in the old guest room.  It feels so good to have the room back and functional!

the cabinet under the TV has been primed!

 This cabinet used to be a baby blue color (you might still be able to see some of the blue through the primer) and it's really the last of the previous owners' paint choices that we have in the house--except the future nursery! We've been meaning to paint it since we moved it, but it always seemed low on the priority list.  Now that the basement is really coming together and we have all the painting stuff out anyway, we figured we'd finally tackle the project.  It'll need at least another coat of primer and then probably two coats of bright white paint but this is progress!

the plastic that was covering the bar is down and everything is clean of concrete dust!

 This picture is amazing. Amazing, I tell you! This is the bar that Alex built right before we had the french drains installed (major timing fail, but it's what happened). So it's been covered up since practically Halloween and absolutely everything was covered in concrete dust.  We wiped down the couch and chairs, the counters, the walls, and all the bottles.  There were a few science experiments in the small refrigerator, but nothing too gross.  You can also see in this picture the flooring that we started along the hallway and in the bar area; this is the flooring that will continue into the new guest room (you can see the the boxes are ready to go!).  Last night we went out to dinner and when we came back, we just had to come back down and take a look at the progress.  Alex put the ottoman and the chair on the floor and we sat on the couch, right there in the middle of the room, and just looked around.  He made us a cocktail (or two...) and we told stories of all the work we'd done in the basement and the rest of the house.  The pups even came down with us and curled up on the couch too.  It was really, really nice to hang out in a part of the house that as basically been a construction zone for so long.  I'm so grateful that he's so hardworking, motivated, and handy, and that he takes such pride in creating a home for us that is personal and safe (and dry!). 

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everyone!   We'll be hanging out in our basement by the bar, exactly where we should be :)