A few days ago, we officially switched our "home projects" from outdoors, to indoors for the winter. We accomplished alot this summer, we've accomplished alot in the last 3 years really since purchasing and moving into this house. Let's have a brief recap, shall we?
This is what the yard and basement looked like when we first signed on the dotted line.
Notice the trees, oy the trees. Dead and alive. What a pain in the ass they were. Also, the clay. Also a pain in the ass to smooth out and get rid of. Not that I really had a role in removing and smoothing. More of a supervisory role. Ah Memories. Then the sod. 3 days of rain and a (newly) pregnant wife. Good times.
Pay no attention to the dude on the right with the scowl on his face. He is thinking oh _________, what have I gotten myself into. Notice that big open space behind that teeny weeny little running girl? Yay. We'll get back to that space in a minute.
So this summer we managed to finish up a few small odd jobs outside, and build our fence. See our fence? Ain't it purty? (I had to run outside and take this picture in my Jammie's at 8:30 this morning for this post, so I hope you are all appreciative).

With the prospect of a loooong winter ahead, we made the decision the other night to start moving forward again on our basement development. We have made it livable already, with painting the concrete floor, and creating different spaces. We have a large playroom, and living/sitting area complete with the TV, computer, Wii system etc., and of course our spare room.
That empty space above? The first thing we did was build the wall. No ordinary straight easy wall, oh no. We had to go and make it a funky 55 degree angled wall. I had pictures of the wall construction, but my computer suffered a nervous breakdown a few month later and I lost a whole bunch of pictures with this particular set. Boo. So here it is, already drywalled and door hung, from the same angle (sorta) as the picture above. Just a closer shot.
Chris mudded and sanded, mudded and sanded, mudded and sanded, and well you get the idea. He's a bit of an, erm, perfectionist when it comes to that sort of thing. He did a great job, really. Just took for.ever. Sorry honey. Then we painted..
A nice soft blue/grey. This guy? He's delirious after spending months inhaling drywall dust and paint fumes. Also, the only shot of the room I have without the sub-floor showing, apparently I forgot to take pictures of the painting in action as well. Terrible official photographer, aren't I.
The sub-floor was fun to install! And expensive! That crazy idea with the angled wall? Fun! but we did it (and I use the term "we" very loosely here..)

And this is how the room has sat since.. oh.. well the date on this picture set says September 08. We put a bed in of course, and a chest for clothes, TV and a chair. It has a door, so it's been functional. Until Tuesday morning, when I got the call. Let's lay the flooring down. Ohhhhhkay.
Thankfully, we found a nice looking and cheap laminate wood flooring here in town. It took us Tuesday night to get the hang of laying it down and snapping it in properly, and a few hours on Wednesday to finish what we had. I say what we had, because what we had was a box short of laminate. On a holiday. So we moved everything back into the room, welcomed our overnight guest (Hi Dad!) and then finished it off tonight. It looks great. I love it.
See those hand-prints on the top of the picture? The door and the wall? Ya. Thanks my son. That's the last time I let you have Cheezies and wander around. So anyhow. Now we are contemplating our next move. We were all prepared to build the closet in the morning, and now we aren't so sure. It's a BIG job. A hard job. I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out.