The last major unresolved  project (thing we hadn’t even started) just happens to be our entire basement. Other than the wine cellar, guest room, and bathroom, there is a giant open empty room on the lower level of my house. MK has taken the reins on this one. 

(Sidenote: If I didn’t mention it before, we picked rooms the way you pick a basketball team, I got living room, he picked basement, I picked guest room, he got his office, etc. It is hilarious, but so far a totally effective way of solving debates, until we start finishing out the basement, when it’s going to get ugly.) 

He sealed the trim and the windows and air vents and we cleaned the walls and the laundry room. We had to shut off the crappy fireplace and will have to get a new one. He FINALLY let me paint over the nasty maroon walls – since we couldn’t really agree on a final color we used three… One wall that is actually IN the basement living room is white now to match the rest of the basement, no idea why it WAS ever red. The hallway we used leftover grey, it may be temporary, but I like it. I made the upper half of the hallway match the kitchen since we had the paint, why not? We pulled down some wood that might have hung doors at one point and I painted the entryway to the basement living room and the hand rails, which were just plain wood before: 

Better than Maroon!

 Then I drew the short straw or whatever and while he was working on the master bath I had to paint the ceiling. Twice. And that’s only primer, I’ll have to do another coat of paint. The fireplace had made the ceiling really dingy, and with snow covering the windows we need to brighten the basement up! 

It was super painful, my neck still aches, and yesterday I skied with bruised shins, seeing as I kept knocking my legs in to the stupid ladder. I’m a hot mess right now, totally. But I did it, so I rule. 

Beats sooty brown!

 That’s the ceiling. What is that brick? The fireplace! Gross, right? Have you seen the WHOLE thing? Super gross! 

Painting = cheaper than tearing down.

 Today, while he’s out skiing in awesome snow, I’ve been put to another nasty task: 

washing the brick to prime and paint it. 

In case you never knew, DIRTY BRICK IS GROSS. The only thing grosser is THE SMELL OF WET BRICK. Today is not making the top of my why I love living here list.

My new living room art that is not quite big enough to cover the wood on the wall we need to tear down, but at least makes it less conspicuous from the street:

Seriously, we drove by our own house at night with the windows open and lights on and freaked out. All people see is that wood!

So, a little trump l’oeil with the mirrors and ta-da! 8% less painful for others. Still mostly painful for me. Our company keeps saying it’s ‘ski lodge-y’ and they like it, then I say we’re tearing it down, and you can see the breath of relief they emit.

Then my office got a new bed! It’s an uber comfy couch bed that folds a bunch of different ways, from Costco. Getting that thing in this house was a riot, up the snowy stairs just the two of us after I drove it home in BB’s monster truck. Yikes! It’s staying in the house forever even if we don’t.

For house projects two and three, we decided to paint the utility room and buy me some bookshelves.

What is a Utah utility room you wonder? Well, Mormons believe something like there will be an Apocalypse but they fail (this is my understanding only haha) and have to keep food for a year for each family member in their house. Some people have unfinished cold storage rooms in their house. Ours got finished and the previous owner used it is a warm workshop alternative to the garage. It’s as big as a 5th bedroom, but no windows. Someday we hope to have our laundry in it, so we wanted to paint it pretty.

MK went to the store, bought paint in 10 seconds, and got some brushes. We put newspaper down after cleaning the floor and pulling up the trim. The walls were white with patch marks showing that needed to be covered. MK basically picked a slightly darker shade of white. When we were done with coat one, we realized the texture on the walls made it really hard to get all the wall covered. So back to the store for coat number two can of paint, and paper to put down not of the news variety since the print made our feet and the floor black. Learn as you go.

Not sure why, but we’ve been made fun of for this second coat. I mean, it had to be done. Now our walls look nice and we could put all our storage crap in the room. Even thought we haven’t replaced the trim yet. Or the faceplates. Whatever. Next.

I am a nerd. Nerds have tons of books. I have no shelves. Solution: Ikea. We got two giant and super easy to assemble cases. That room needs to be painted but oh well, at least the books aren’t on the floor. Nerds hate the poor treatment of sacred books.