Last night I spent some time down in the basement, working on my finishing project, for the first time since April. I guess the warmer months didn’t provide me with much opportunity to stay inside and work. Now that the sun is setting before I’m even off work, I hope I’ll be able to dedicate some time to the project once again.  Anyway, last night I finished patching a ten square foot section of the floor that was not even close to level with the rest of the basement. Nearly a year ago, I filled in most of it, and I finally finished it off with some resurfacing mix that is much smoother. I forgot to get a picture, but may post one in the future.  I still need to decide what we want to do to finish the flooring, but that may be able to wait while the walls are constructed. Hopefully that will start soon. Nearly a year after I started working on the project, I’ve yet to get much accomplished, but I’m hoping that will all change this winter.

Spring is in the air, and I’m loving every minute of it. In addition to all of the running outside, long bike rides, and other outdoor fitness activities, I really enjoy getting in the yard and doing some landscaping. On Sunday, I added some new shrubs to our back fence area, a spot where grass refuses to grow, which I’m very happy about. I also mowed the lawn for the first time, put down some fertilizer, and tested out the sprinkler system. I found an outside leak that I hope to fix this weekend, and then we’ll be fully ready for summer. We even kicked on the swamp cooler fan last night for the first time. It was over 80 degrees upstairs at 10 o’clock, so we had to get some cooler air inside for bed time.

I’ve also been trying to take myself off of my daily dose of Claritin-D. I was hoping that maybe I’m outgrowing my allergies, but have resulted to taking a couple doses of Claritin without the decongestant. I’m also looking at more natural ways to reduce the effects from season allergies. I’ve been reading up on different herbs but haven’t taken that plunge. I feel alright most of the time, but recently I’ve been struggling with a cold that I just can’t kick. Perhaps some racquetball tonight will knock it out of my system, the run yesterday didn’t help.

I have finally finished sealing the basement walls, or at least the largest section of it before some construction can begin. I originally wanted to finish this before Jan 1, but I was really underestimating the amount of work to be done. Next, I need to finish leveling the large section of floor that was not even close to being flush. This won’t level out the entire floor, but it’s a good start, and then I can decide what I want to do from there for the finished surface.

Here’s a shot of the walls before I even started applying anything:

Halfway through:

Finished:

Here is another look at the largest exterior wall with my finished work. You can notice some color difference between where I started and the last section I did on the upper third of the wall:

Here is what it looked like halfway through, back in December:

I installed a home security system into the house last night from SimpliSafe. We had always tossed around the idea of having a system installed, but were put off from the high costs associated with companies like ADT or Brinks. When I first read about SimpliSafe, I was immediately impressed not only with the low cost, but also with the ease of customizing/expanding the system and the simple look of the system. The setup couldn’t have been easier with the great setup guide on the computer and the wonderfully wireless components already equipped with sticky tape. And any time I’ve run into a question or issue, their customer service has been top notch responding almost immediately and doing everything possible to please. I am highly impressed with everything so far and I would definitely recommend this system.

Less than one month after I started putting some serious effort into the basement, I’d like to provide a quick update and some photos. I removed most of the old framing, except for a section that seems to be solidly anchored, which I’m now considering keeping. I then started leveling the floor and sealing up the foundation walls. If you view each of the photos below, I’ve provided a link to a similar before shot so you can see how I’m progressing. There is still lots to be done, but I’m hoping the sealing will be done by the end of the year, then it’s time to actually start building things.

Sunday afternoon we spent some time working on the basement project that I mentioned here nearly two years ago. I have multiple different plans drawn up in SketchUp, but prior to this day had done very little actual work toward achieving my goal. Well that has changed, and I’m posting these pictures to force myself into keeping regular updates going on the project. I’m trying to dedicate at least one night a week to the project, hoping that eventually I’ll start having fun with it and put in even more time. Right now the dirty work is not much fun at all.

So here are a few pictures that Kim snapped on Sunday. You’ll see that I am busy tearing down some previous framing that was not done very well. I figure that I’ll want my walls to actually stand up for years to come, so redoing them is the only way to go. Once we get all of the wood out of the way, we’ll be removing any loose material from the walls and then resealing them with some products I picked up from Home Depot. You’ll also see a photo an area of the floor that is not level with the rest of the basement, which I am already in the process of filling in. We are slowly making some progress and I hope I’ll be able to post some more pictures next week with some visible changes being made.

Sorry if some of the photos are a bit blurry, the camera was set to manual focus and Kim didn’t realize that.

Over time, we’ve been slowly replacing some of our hand-me-down furniture items with some new stuff of our own. Our most recent purchase is a new counter height dining room table, that was just delivered yesterday. It was nice having my parents around so they could help unwrap everything and get it all setup. This new table provides much more space than the garage sale table we bought years ago. Now we can finally seat more than two people for dinner. So far I’m really happy with the purchase. I’ll try to get some updated house pictures online soon, things are slowly being updated.

We’re debating putting new siding on our house. We have a dormer that is in terrible condition and is the primary driving force behind this project. But while we were thinking about it, the back of the house also needs some work to repair and repaint the wood shake siding that is on there currently. So instead of doing that work, why not have new siding put onto the back of the house? And then I figured if we are doing the back we might as well do the front in order to keep things consistent. So now we’re looking at getting all of the siding redone.

The one question that still remains for me is if it’s worth it. It’s fairly expensive project when looking at doing the whole house, even when using products like vinyl siding. Of course we don’t want to destroy the integrity of the older home, so we’re only considering siding that still has a wood shake look to it. Often, you can’t even tell this stuff is fake when it’s up on the house. But I’m still not 100% sold on the idea. Anyone have any opinions on vinyl siding, or any other products?

As I mentioned last week, we’ve got lots of spring activity going on around the house with the incredible weather Denver has been having. In addition to the bulbs in the back coming up more and more with each passing day (no blooms yet), the flowers I noticed last year in the front yard are back as well. When we redid the front planting beds, I moved the bulbs around a little and spread them out some, but they still look really cool and are in full bloom. The purple weeds in the yard are back as well, though I didn’t actually remember seeing them before until I checked the entry from last year. I guess these blooms fade pretty quickly and aren’t seen the rest of the spring and summer. I want to put down some fertilizer on the yard, so maybe I can find something that will take care of the weeds too. I honestly have no idea when I should spread something like this, does anyone have advice?

For the past couple of months I’ve been working on fixing up the garage. Once we had the roof redone on the house and the garage, I finally felt like I could put a little extra work into it. So first, I remounted the garage door opener so it was more sturdy and Kim would no longer feel like it was going to fall on top of the Jetta. From there, I patched multiple holes in the garage floor. I tried one type of patch first but found it really hard to work with. So after visiting the local hardware store again, one of the very helpful salesmen directed me toward a much better product. This time I was able to smooth the patch out and fill in the holes very easily. After a couple of weeks, all of the holes were filled and I could finally start using the garage again.

That was until the other night when I left for hockey. I pressed the opener and the garage door attempted to open, but the rubber weatherstripping on the bottom of the door was apparently frozen to the concrete floor. The door still tried opening anyway, until I stopped it, but the damage was done. The weatherstripping was completely ripped from the bottom of the door except for a small piece on each end. And during the struggle, part of the door was actually bent. Fortunately the dent is pretty hard to notice, but I tried bending it back anyway. After another visit to the hardware store I returned with some very powerful adhesive that I used to put the weatherstripping back in place and put the door back together. I haven’t tried opening the door yet, but I’m hoping the next time I do all will be well. Mental note to myself: when shoveling snow don’t forget to open the garage door and shovel there as well.