In the past, blowing through a deadline was the result of severely underestimating how long things would take.  This time, it was a complete lack of motivation...  I was a basement renovation machine in March, April, and May.  I worked 20-30 hours a week on top of a full time job to get everything done for drywall.  Then once drywall was done, I was totally burned out.  I hated, hated, hated, working on the basement.  Unfortunately, Katrina hates, hates, hates having the basement half-finished.  All I can say is it's a good thing we love each other.

Over the last few months I trained for and completed my first triathlon!  It was a great break from the basement but I still managed to get some work done along the way.  Lately my motivation has picked back up and I'm back in basement mode!  Here's what we've done since June:

• Cleaned up all the drywall and returned the 10 extra sheets we had.  Turns out it's an ordeal to move 15 foot long sheets of drywall.
• Primed the walls and painted the ceiling in the living room.
• Cut old 1920s doors down to size to fit in our doorways.
• Installed the jams and doors.  Note to self, next time buy pre-hung doors or hire this out, I've never sworn so much.
• Brought the TV down to the basement and installed all the home theater stuff.  Minus the Wii - we'll tell you our plan for that later.
• Built our Karlstad sectional/chase/ottomans.  Katrina was the muscles on this project.  Give her an Ikea box and instructions and she's in her happy place!
• Put flooring down in the storage room and moved a bunch of our stuff from storage to... our storage room.
• Designed and labored on built-in cabinets and shelves - hours and hours of fun.
• Put in outlets on the first floor and powered them up.
• Put together a nursery. What?  Yes.  This needs it's own post.  We are not expecting our own child but are planning on having children in our home very soon!

This post is useless without pictures

Agreed.  Put your shoes on, we're going on a tour.

Come down the stairs and look to the left.  Here's our laundry room!

Excuse the mess, Katrina's in the middle of doing laundry and a lot of the stuff that will end up in cabinets or in our built-ins is piled up in here at the moment.

Head back the way we were going, here are our beautiful doors.  They look all beat up right now but we're going to sand them and paint them eventually.

Check out our storage room.

That's the flooring (Allure by TrafficMaster - Dark Walnut) that will be everywhere when the basement's done.  Speaking of flooring, it's all bought and piled up in the Bathroom right now.

Don't go in there.  We need to save up for the in-floor heating, tile, and toilet so we're not going to touch it until the rest of the basement is finished.  The shower works, though, if you're desperate.

Moving on.

There's our Karlstad (not named Karl) and you can see the built-ins in the background.

There's a better view, make yourself at home.  Like our rug?  You can get it at Home Depot in the tarp section.

Here's how the TV wall is looking.

The speakers are in now but we still need to cover the entire thing with acoustical cloth and cover it with trim.

Here's the bedroom.

This has turned into the wood shop and usually has my table saw, miter saw, router, and circular saw but I put them all away for Thanksgiving.  I left the pile of scrap wood in the closet since there's nowhere else for it to go.

Speaking of my scrap wood, check out the built-ins I made.

They took forever to make so if you don't like them, please don't say anything.  We need to get some doors for the cabinets below and then we'll paint everything white- except the counter top and the strip of wood above the cabinet but below the shelves.  I'm going to stain that dark brown like our kitchen cart which will also match the stain on the wood behind the TV.   I'm not sure what we're going to put in the opening eventually.  Probably not those ottomans.  We're thinking a place to sit and read for kids or a little play stage.  Oh, and we're going to put crown molding around this room that will cover the gap above the cabinets.

Turn around for a better view of the couch area on your way out.  The glory of so much seating!

It looks kind of bland right now but the plan is to put board and batten on the walls and paint the top half some soft of gray. Plus the crown molding will give it more architectural interest!

That's about it!  It's come a long way since the last update:

We still have a long way to go.  Katrina's done giving deadlines, so we're just taking it day by day and trying to be flexible yet productive and enjoy the other parts of our house and life too!

We did manage to get a few blurry cell phone pics.  They're mostly updates Katrina texted to me while I was at work and too impatient to wait till I got home from work to see progress!  Here are a couple "along the way" pictures of drywall going up.

Ceiling is up!

Living room looking west

Living room looking east

Bedroom

Bathroom with mold-resistant purple board

Laundry room - they used some left over purple board behind the washer and dryer!

Hanging, mudding, and taping the drywall is one of the jobs we hired out.  It definitely cost more than DIY but it looks 100x better than I could have done and it was finished in a week!  They even patched some of the plaster I had cut open to get some electrical in the stairwell.  We're super happy with the work, if you need a quote, let us know and we'll send you their info!

So what have we done in the last 5 months??  Check back in the next few days for up-to-date pics of the basement   Hopefully....

The general contractor we've been working with... I realized we've never said who, it's Dube Construction and I'd recommend them to anyone in the Minneapolis/metro area - email us for their number!  Anyway, the general contractor we've been working with has been great and has encouraged us to DIY as much as possible so we can save money on the renovation.  For drywall, he suggested buying the drywall ourselves and carrying it into the basement.  I was all aboard since I have a personal rule against paying skilled laborers (drywall hangers) to do manual labor (walking up and down stairs with drywall, in this case).

Our contractor suggested buying 4x12 sheets which makes it easier on the drywall installers and ends up costing less because there are less seams to mud and tape.  We were a little skeptical that a 4x12 sheet would fit down our stairs so Katrina and I went to Home Depot to buy one sheet as a test to see if it would fit.  We needed to rent a truck to get some 4x8 sheets of plywood anyway, so we threw the drywall on as well.  And by 'throw' I mean,  'were barely able to lift the drywall onto the truck since it was so heavy'.  A guy who was standing around the loading dock offered to "save a marriage" by helping Katrina lift her end.  (We may have been bickering under the weight.)   When we got the drywall home it was clear we weren't going to be able to carry it anywhere so we left it on our side walk for a couple hours until our contractor stopped by to pick something up.  The two of us were able to carry it and it fit down the stairs - barely.  Here's the monster sheet in our basement.

I ordered the 68 sheets we needed for drywall, 60 of them being 4' x 12' super long sheets of drywall and found out the heaviest ones (like the one Katrina and I brought home) weigh over 100 pounds each.  Yikes.  For some reason I assumed they were like 20 pounds each and we would just carry them in.  I asked how much Home Depot would charge to carry the drywall into the basement instead of just dropping it on the curb.... $850.  That was not happening.  Luckily 7 spectacular friends agreed to help in exchange for beer and lunch.

I ended up ordering through Lowe's because their prices were slightly cheaper and I could get an additional 5% off with my Lowe's card.  I was hoping they could deliver it the morning my friends were available to help carry it but they were all booked that day.  It had to be delivered the day before... and it was supposed to rain that night.  While drywall can get wet it shouldn't sit out in a rain storm so I had to come up with a way to keep it dry.  I decided to buy some large tarps to wrap the drywall in a water-tight package over night.  The only problem - I couldn't get the tarps until the morning the drywall was delivered.  Ugg.  The drywall was supposed to be delivered sometime in the morning but I wasn't sure exactly what time.  I was hoping I'd be able to wake up, buy the tarps, and lay one on the ground before they dropped the drywall off.  Here's how that morning went down:

7:15 am - Wake up to the sound of a big truck outside our window.  CRAP!  Is drywall here already?  Nope just a big dumpster being dropped off by my curb.  (It turned out to be for a neighbor getting their roof re-done)

7:30 am - Now I'm up getting ready to leave for the store when a delivery truck pulls up out front.  I walk out and ask the driver if he's dropping off drywall.  Nope, he's dropping off shingles for my neighbor.  Ok, well I better get my butt to the store before MY truck comes.

8:30 am - Back from the store, cut the wood I bought in half to keep the drywall off the ground.  About 10 minutes after I got home another truck shows up to our front door.  This time for us!

The driver was great about dropping off the drywall onto my little tarp tent and stacking the loads.  I have to give him props for his fork lift driving skills.

We folded this tarp upward and covered the whole things with a second tarp.  We were slightly worried someone might try to steal it until we remembered the weight and the likelihood that anyone would drive up to our house with a forklift and truck in the middle of the night.  It did rain all night but our tarps held up and the drywall stayed safe.

The next day my brave friends came over to help carry the sheets down one at a time.

We perfected the process but that doesn't mean it ever got easier!

We had to grab a sheet...

Haul it up the stairs...

Rotate around in the porch...

Work it down the stairs...

And put it in the pile.

A couple hours later, the deed was done!  We had a big pile of drywall and everything was ready to go for the pros to get to work.  I owe my friends a huge debt of gratitude!!!!

Next up... hanging drywall.  The fastest change to the basement since demolition!

Budget

I've decided there are three big factors to how much a basement renovation will cost: The current condition of your basement, how nicely you're going to finish it, and how much work you're going to do yourself.

The current condition

Is your basement even able to be finished?  Some basements have so many problems with water, have low ceilings overall, or have utilities right in the middle of the space that it's economically unfeasible to make all the changes that would be required just to make the space usable.

Basements that are able to be finished may still have big obstructions hanging down from the ceilings - pipes, HVAC, electrical, supports.  Any of them can be moved... for a price.  Starting with a basement that's relatively obstruction free is going to save you a lot of money.  If your basement has a lot of obstructions you'll need to decide if you're going work around them (and have lower ceilings/bulkheads) or move them to fit nicely in to the ceiling joists.  We chose a combination of using bulkheads in the laundry room and a few in the bathroom and bedroom, but moved a long radiator pipe in the family room area to avoid a bulkhead there.

Another factor is how large your basement is.  I've come across several inexpensive renovations for basements that essentially have one medium sized living room.  That's a great way to add more space to the house and frankly I'm jealous it can be done in a shorter time for less money.  The larger the basement the larger the scope of the renovation.

How nicely you're going to finish it

There's a wide range of finishing options that have vastly different price tags.  I've seen friends and blog acquaintances paint the floor with epoxy paint, spray the ceiling joists white, and put up some drywall to cover the concrete walls to turn a gross basement into something that feels MUCH nicer for only a little bit of work and money.  On the other hand, I've seen basements you would swear were the 1st or second level of a house - I think they call these "conditioned lower levels" instead of "basements" - and they cost a pretty penny.  Between those two options there are several shades of gray - will you add a bathroom or bar where there isn't plumbing?  Will you add new electric?  New lights?  Insulate the walls, excavate down, re-pour concrete or even add in-floor heating?  They all have a price tag.  We tried to land in the shade of gray that considered the safety, longevity and aesthetic aspects of each decision while finding ways to save money in that price range.  We chose to add a bathroom (and the plumbing for it) in our basement, which was a hefty part of the overall cost of the basement.  We didn't excavate anything, but we did need to re-pour some of the concrete and we're planning on adding in-floor heat in just the bathroom.  We added new electric and lights in our basement renovation and ended up extending it to the main level for safety reasons.

How much you're going to do yourself

I figure in the end our basement will have taken around 1200 hours of DIY labor.  If it was done by professionals it would take fewer hours... maybe 600?  Heck, I'll give myself less credit and say they could do it in 400.  If the average price of labor is $50/hour (which I think is conservative) which adds up to $20,000 in labor we'll have saved by doing it ourselves.  That's nothing to write off!  I'll also admit, though, that DIY work vs. professional work goes hand-in-hand with the previous topic "how nicely you're going to finish it".  We did choose to hire out some of the work, but made our choices based on safety (we hired a plumber for the underground plumbing, had everything inspected along the way) and aesthetics (we hired the drywall and mudding/taping out since we knew our DIY work might look like it was our first time and change the entire look of the finished walls.

Our budget

We've always listed out how much our renovations cost on the blog but for some reason we're feeling sheepish about posting the exact numbers for this one - maybe because it's a lot bigger of a number than things like our $700 kitchen reno.  If someone asked either of us in person we would tell them so if you're trying to figure out costs send us an email and you'll tell you more specifics.  For the purpose of things published forever into the blogosphere we'll just say it's in the $10,000-20,000 range.  Here's where the money has gone by category.  Note, this is through drywall and doesn't include trim, built-ins, paint, and flooring yet.

We didn't think drywall would end up being our biggest expense but it's one of the jobs we're hiring out so that category includes labor.  Plus there's just a lot of space to drywall!  I'm happy to see the lowest percents went to demo (we sold salvaged items so the net cost was almost nothing), paying a general contractor an hourly rate to come help with jobs that were out of our comfort zone, permits (which makes me think they're even more worthwhile because they're so cheap relative to the rest of the costs), and tools.  Sometimes we feel like the cost of tools has been really high - I bought a miter saw, framing tools (hammer, squares and levels), a table saw, circular saw, reciprocating saw, a finishing nail gun with compressor, and all the hand tools I needed for plumbing and electrical.  At the time it felt like a big expense but nowI look at is as 5% of the total cost and an even smaller percent of the cost it would have been to hire someone who already owned the tools.  On top of that, now I own the tools so future projects will be cheaper and easier!

We haven't had an official appointment to determine the new value of our house with the remodel, but when we had dinner with our realtor recently she estimated the house value to increase up to $30,000 by the time we've finished the renovation, which made us pretty pleased with our decision to finish the basement, and just enough inspiration to finish it up already!  Ultimately, the real reason we embarked on this project was for a more comfortable bedroom/bathroom for guests, a less formal play room/movie room, and some organized storage, so the increase in house value will only be a bonus for us!

Haha, yes.  Can you imagine me spending days going through can after can of great stuff to insulate the entire basement?  No, this is the kind of insulation that comes from a truck...

Down a hose and through a window...

and into the spray gun of a competent professional.

This stuff is really amazing, I could go on and on.  It insulates at 6.5 R per inch, is air tight, and is water tight.  The main reasons we went with this type of insulation were to keep water out of our house, and to keep heat in.

Mold needs three things to grow: water, air, and food (any organic compound).  There are two common scenarios that create this condition in a basement.

Water seeping in through cracks in the foundation - Water enters the basement in a liquid form, comes in contact with wood, batt insulation, or drywall, and mold grows.  To stop this, the foundation can be water-proofed from the inside or outside (so no water can't get in), you can make sure the ground is graded away from the foundation at 1" per foot for at least 3 feet (so water doesn't stay near the foundation), weeping tile and a sump pump can be installed (to remove water as soon as it's in), and you could make sure downspouts send the water at least 3 feed from the foundation (so water doesn't stay near the foundation).

Condensation on the interior walls - When warm, moist, air comes in contact with a cool surface the moisture in the air turns into liquid water, aka condensation.  Think of a cold glass of water/lemonade/beer on a hot day, the glass gets covered in condensation pretty quickly.  The same thing happens on the cool foundation walls when the basement air has a lot of moisture and is warmer than the walls.  Without ANY insulation there's not really a problem because the walls are room temperature and if any water condenses it evaporates back into the room.

Now, if you put insulation in front of the walls there's a thermal break between the walls and the room.  On a fall day the room is 70 degrees but the wall will be much cooler because it's insulated from the warm air in the room.  If any air gets behind the insulation it will condense on the wall and turn into water.  This is the reason you need to have a vapor barrier (sheet of plastic) on the warm side of the wall.  In my example, the vapor barrier would be between the drywall and the batt insulation, the foundation wall would be cooler than the room but the vapor barrier would block any moist air from getting to the foundation.  If the vapor barrier was on the cool side of the room - between the insulation and the foundation wall - moist air would get behind the insulation and condense on the "cold" vapor barrier and mold.

So, batt insulation and a vapor barrier work together to make a warm room that doesn't promote mold, but the vapor barrier is extremely important.  If it's not air tight, the whole system starts to fail.  If the seams of the vapor barrier aren't sealed, it doesn't work.  If there's a hole in the vapor barrier, it doesn't work.  Any drywall screws that miss the stud can pop a hole in the vapor barrier, any pictures hung on the wall can break the vapor barrier.  If you use batt insulation and a vapor barrier, the vapor barrier has to be perfect.

Because the vapor barrier is never perfect in reality, batt insulation is not a great insulation for basement walls.  The next best option is rigid foam insulation.  Polystyrene (Styrofoam) and Polyisocyanurate (called poly-iso) insulate and don't allow water or air to pass through the 4x8 sheet.  You need to carefully tape each of the seams and make sure there isn't a gap at the top or bottom or air can pass through and condense on the foundation.  Rigid foam insulation makes a great basement insulation if you're careful to seal everything up.  Spray foam insulation has the same properties as rigid insulation but is custom fit to any wall.  It's sprayed on as a liquid and expands to fit every bump, hole, or crack.  It becomes one continuous piece of insulation with no gaps or seams which guarantees no air can pass through to condense on the foundation.  Neither rigid or spray foam is water proof but they're both so impermeable that essentially no water can pass through it.

We went with spray foam insulation because we wanted to make sure our home was safe of any mold and we didn't want to worry that the seams or gaps (which would be many with our uneven walls and floors) in rigid insulation would be letting water and air in/out.  Now that we have our insulation in, our sea foam green walls are out and beige color insulation is in.  Here's how everything is looking.

See the big sheet of drywall in the living room??  We'll update you more on that soon since there's progress being made as I type!

Once the insulation was up we could finish installing the shower that needs to be up before drywall.  We don't really anticipate this shower getting used much so we saved some money and got a pre-fabricated shower.   It looks ok for a pre-fab, right?

We may not have a toilet or a working sink, but we have a shower and we have beautiful spray-foamed walls!  Now onto drywall...

Electrical: Check
Mechanical: Check
Plumbing: Check
Building: Check

All the rough-ins are done and the city/state has given us the OK to move on to insulation and drywall!!!

We still have to get final inspections once everything is done but it's really hard to mess up anything from here out.  All the structural and behind-the-scenes work is done and passed.  That's a huge weight off our shoulders!

Insulation on Friday, drywall next week!  After 14 months of ugliness, we are so ready for some clean-slate drywall!

Last September we decided to change the floor plan in the basement living room to mount the TV on a shared wall with the storage room.  The hope is for the wall to look something like this:

Where the cream colored areas are, we plan to put a tweed speaker grill cloth that will run floor to ceiling except where the TV is recessed, and where we will add archictectural wood over the fabric.  This will give the room an interesting focal point and effectively hide the speakers in the wall.  So far, the wall has looked more like this:

Last weekend I decided it was time to flesh out this wall a little more.  It will help the drywallers know where to end their wall and I also wanted to bring the TV down and test out the in-wall cables - if I need to replace one it will be 100 times easier now while the walls are open!

First, I needed to add a couple studs to the back so the TV mount has something to connect to.  Here's the view from the back side of the wall with a pair of studs attached.

Next I covered the back of the recessed TV box with oak plywood.  Most of our woodwork will be painted but We're going to add stained oak in a few places for contrast and to tie in with the main level woodwork.  Here's the unstained oak held up temporarily with 2x2 braces while the glue dries.

After the glue dried we bolted the TV stand into the new studs and hung the TV!  I tested the in-wall cables and everything was working great.  Since we had hauled the TV down and were both too tired after a long day of work to bring it back upstairs, we decided to watch a movie.  We tried to bring our patio love seat down but it wouldn't fit through the back door so we settled for camping chairs and a big bowl of popcorn.

It was pretty uncomfortable but really exciting to dim the lights and get a taste of how it will be to watch movies once the basement is done!!

The next day we brought the TV back upstairs and I sheathed the wall with some cheap plywood since it will be covered by fabric eventually.

I think it looks like a robot whale face.

Here's the finished back side of the wall.

I still need to build the shelf for the speakers to sit on (so they point out the opening in the wall), add more oak to the left, right, and top of the recessed box, stain the oak, attach the fabric, and add molding.  I think that will all come later, but for now, it's a lot further along than it was!

This also marks our first wall that's covered in something other than studs, and the start of a real-room feeling! 

P.S. We passed our electrical and Mechanical (heating) inspections!!!  This week will be plumbing and building inspections, next week is insulation, and the week after is drywall.  No stopping it now   Hopefully...

• Demolished the wood paneling and furring strips that held it to the block walls
• Rerun the electrical that passed through this room in conduit with new, grounded, wire.
• Built new 2x4 walls
• Removed the old drain, laundry sink, and plumbing vent
• Jack hammered a trench in the concrete for new plumbing
• Added a new floor drain, sink drain, washing machine drain and drain vent
• Ran new hot and cold water for the laundry sink and washing machine
• Removed the old dryer vent that went through the window
• Ran a new dryer vent through the exterior wall
• Added a dedicated 20 amp electrical circuit for receptacles
• Added a new electrical circuit for9 lights
• Roughed in pipes for a baseboard radiator to heat the room
• Added access panels for the plumbing and gas valves once the drywall is up

Here's how it looks:

Before - February 2011

 Now

Originally we just put four can lights in the ceiling but once we powered them up we realized the corners were super dark, especially over the laundry sink.

With the light added over the sink and things seemed better.  I had to build bulk heads on each side of the room to cover pipes and as soon as they were in, the room got a whole lot darker again.  We've realized that recessed lights, especially in a room with low ceilings, don't spread very far.  A single on-ceiling (boob) light makes as much light as 4 recessed lights.  The bulk heads (especially the left one) blocked the light from spreading so the solution was to add more recessed lights under the bulk head - that's how we ended up with 9 lights in a 10x12 room!  Here's that bulk head with extra lighting.

Why are the new lights so far from the wall you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  While I was building the bulk heads Katrina was taking measurements of the room and making plans on Ikea's 3D home planner.  Here's the floor plan she came up with.

On the far wall we're going to have the laundry sink and washer & dryer.  To the right of the dryer there's room to build some shelves that will hold laundry baskets and we'll tuck the dehumidifier underneath - it is a basement after all. There's another void between the shower wall and a box we had to frame around our main plumbing stack (it's the yellow rectangle-thing on the floor plan) that we're going to turn into a small closet for hanging Katrina's longer dresses - remember our bedroom closet is only 4 feet tall

Here's what this wall could look like.

The opposite wall is going to eventually be turned into some extra storage for our small kitchen.  Don't get me wrong, we're making the most of our kitchen and it's fine for every day use, but we could use a better place to store the fondu pot, food dehydrator, turkey roaster that we only use for special occasions, not to mention all the Costco food extras we like to have on hand.  The plan for this wall is to put in a chest freezer (again for some Costco deals!) with cabinets above it in the corner, then floor to ceiling (bulkhead is only 6 1/2 feet off the ground) cabinets from the freezer to the door.  This floor plan is pretty rough, in reality we'll leave enough room to walk through the door!

Oh, I almost forgot the last detail we're super excited about!  The ceiling is higher in the middle of the room - between the bulk heads - and creates a tray ceiling.  We're hoping to cover that section of the ceiling with tin tiles similar to this and put in crown molding between the tin ceiling and bulk heads.  We've liked the look of tin ceiling for a long time now and we're excited to finally have a place to use it.

Can you see the room coming together?  Drywall is coming in a couple weeks and it will feel completely different after that.  Sometimes it's hard to picture it all, but once the drywall is in dreaming big will be even easier!

Some of the details we're dreaming about include drying racks, a fun printed fabric ironing board hanging on the wall, pictures hung with pant hangers like this, an industrial laundry bin such as this, and an antique ringer/washer we found at a garage sale similar to this.  We're thinking gray and yellow for paint colors (as you can see in the Ikea Planner drawings) but we're also playing around with the thought of stripes or another fun paint treatment.

What do you think?  Are we missing anything important for a laundry room?  Can you see the vision?

• Rewired the old receptacles (and added a few) on the main level
• Wired all the lights in the basement
• Ran all the low voltage wires (phone, internet, speaker wire, HDMI, and cable) in the basement and to the main level - most of the cables were just drilled through holes in the hardwood so I re-ran them in the walls and added wall jacks
• Installed new thermostats in the basement and main level and ran new wire so they can be hooked up the the zone valves on the boiler
• Finished the plumbing for heat in the basement
• Hooked up vents for the dryer and bathroom fan

It's been a busy couple months!  I've been extra motivated by the prospect of finishing all the rough-in work and moving on to insulation and drywall - both of which will be hired out.  While I've done a lot of work, most of it has been hidden in walls so there's not a ton of visual difference.  It's actually kind of frustrating to work for several hours and have everything look the same when I'm done.  I miss the days of framing walls when things looked vastly different when I was finished.  Oh well.

There has been one major difference  - LIGHT!  The electrical inspector told me to temporarily hook up the lights so he can see (when he comes... soon) so now it's a whole lot brighter down there!  Previously, there were 7 light fixtures, now there are 38!

Here's what everything looks like as of yesterday.

Stairs

Along with my returns I left on the stairs, you can see the lights we picked out (plus one more on the first landing (to the left), not pictured).  I wired them to a dimmer in the TV room so if we're watching a movie with the lights dimmed, there's just enough light to see the stairs if someone wants to run up to the kitchen.  We can always turn the overhead stair lights on but they're pretty bright and the light would spill over to the couches.  It's a personal pet peeve of mine and since I'm building the basement myself I get to do what I want

From the base of the stairs

Here you can see all the new lights.  The storage room straight ahead is dark because we're putting in a fluorescent fixture but we won't hook that up till after the electrical inspection.

Laundry room

New lights and a new dryer vent that you can't see.  The old one is still hanging from the window

Bathroom

The biggest change here is that we got a vanity!  We had big plans to buy an antique dresser and mount a raised bowl sink on top.  Ultimately what our skinny bathroom entrance needed was a skinny sink.  Every dresser we found was at least twice as deep as this sink and it would have made the room feel tiny.  The vanity comes with legs but we haven't put them on yet so it's sitting a little low.  The plan is to paint the base and put on crystal knobs.  Here's our vision for what it could look like.

This week I'm taking a day off work to install the shower and run plumbing to the shower, sink, and toilet.  The sink and toilet won't be fully connected until after drywall but the shower should work, if someone's crazy enough.

Storage Room

I framed out the recessed TV hole a little more but I still need to build the plywood box and run some studs behind it to mount the TV on.  Also, right along the floor I built a box for the kick space heater.  Previously it was mounted to a 2x4 on the ground and the water pipes ran along the floor.  It looked super ghetto and it probably wouldn't have passed inspection so I built around it.  Now the water pipes are safe and I'm not worried about anyone losing a finger in the previously open fan blades!

You can also see to the right of the TV hole some of the low voltage wires I ran.  Here's a better view.

Most of the home theater equipment will go in the storage room behind the TV but we wanted the wii and bluray player (or something similar in the future) to be on a shelf in the living room.  That way we won't have to go into the storage room to put in a movie.  I ran some the necessary wires (plus extra HDMI and CAT5 for the future) through the ceiling and over to where the shelf will be located.  It should be slick and will feel a lot more professional than my old days of running wires along the floor to connect everything.

I also ran speaker wires to the subwoofer and the surround speakers.  I wasn't really finding a good place to mount my surround speakers in our room layout so I decided to sell my speakers and buy some in-ceiling speakers from RBH sound.  That's the same company the rest of my speakers are from so the sound should match right up!

Bedroom

Not much different here!  New lights and you can see the baseboard radiator pretty well.  Also, in the first picture you can see the other kickspace heater to the right of the door.  I mounted this one a little nicer as well but didn't box in the top since it will eventually be built into the bottom of a cabinet.  This room is all done and just waiting for insulation and drywall!

Living room

The lights in this room were a huge transformation.  The 10x30' room had two, TWO, lights before.  I added 16 and it's a WHOLE lot brighter!  I ran the lights on two switches, one of the 6" lights on the inside of the room and one for the 5" lights around the perimeter.  The perimeter lights are the ones hooked up to the stair lights (visible in the first picture), and both switches are dimmable from the TV remote.  I think so far this is my favorite thing in the basement.  I might have gone down at night to play with the dimmers... more than once

With any luck we'll be ready for insulation and drywall in a month!  My fingers are crossed that I don't massively fail the electrical inspection.  I'm half expecting to have to change something for the inspector, I just hope I don't have to rewire the entire basement or something ridiculous!  Wish us luck!

The bathroom was the same way.  The plan was to put in drains so we could add a bathroom in the future... but you need to buy a shower pan and vanity before you can rough plumb... and you need to frame before you can put in your shower pan... and you might as well drywall the bathroom at the same time... and you might as well do electrical at the same time... and then you've pretty much done all the work so why not just put some tile down and finish the thing?

And finally we had a little electrical scope creep.  One day we were at our pastor's house awing over his gorgeous basement - the kind where they excavated down to have higher ceilings, hardwood floors, and a home theater.  Drool.  He was telling me about all the work he did and how it consumed their whole house - even rewiring the main floor electrical while they still had the ceilings open in the basement.  And it hit me.  We needed to do that too.

Our electrical on the main floor is pitiful.  One circuit carries power to the lights and outlets to every room except the dining room and kitchen, all the outlets are ungrounded so we have to use little adapters that don't actually ground anything, there aren't enough outlets in any room, if we run more than one window AC the whole circuit dies, AND the wire that connects everything is a combination of 90-year-old knob and tube and 50-year-old armored cable - both of which are deteriorating.

With this new idea in my head, I decided it was now or never.  Either I rewire the first floor while the ceilings are open, or I put drywall up in the basement and forever hold my peace.  I pictured Mike Holmes'big arms pointing at me and saying, "If you're gonna do it, do it right!"  So doing nothing to the first floor turned into:

And that we did!  Katrina had spring break and I took a week off work.  A friend (thanks Peter!) took a couple days off and was a gigantic help as well.  Here's the plan if you're floor-plan-ally inclined.

The black outlets are existing outlets on separate circuits, we didn't touch these.  The green outlets are new outlets we added while yellow outlets are existing outlets we rewired.  The blue boxes are switches we added to the living room outlets, more on that in a minute.  The blue, green, and red lines represent wires on the three circuits we made.

We're happy with the way the plan turned out.  Each bedroom gets it's own circuit so the window AC units can run at the same time!  We added some outlets so the wiring is up to code but also because we wanted more outlets in useful places.  The two switches in the living room control the top plug in each of the outlets in that room.  That way we don't have to walk around the room turning on and off all our lamps.  First world problem, solved!

We wired everything with 12 gauge wire (thicker wire) so we can run 20 amps on each circuit.  While we could have combined everything into two circuits and still had enough power, we like the idea of separating the bedrooms and making sure we have plenty of juice for AC and computers or whatever else we may plug in one day.

We managed to get all this rewired in just a few days, here's how it went down.

Step 1 - Replace the electrical boxes

There are electrical codes for how large an electrical box needs to be based on the number of wires you're going to put in it.  Our old boxes were all too small so I had to rip/cut/yank them all out and cut larger holes for the new boxes.  I also cut new holes in the walls for the outlets we decided to add.  Here's what an old box looks like compared to the new ones.

Step 2 - Run new wire

This is the part where we got to cut holes in the ceiling joists in the basement and thread wires to all the electrical boxes.  The old boxes already had holes in the floor where the wire traveled from the basement into the walls on the first floor.  Those holes mad it easy to pull the new wires into the existing electrical boxes.  For the new outlets, we had to cut new holes in the ceiling from the basement, making sure the hole ended up in the wall cavity of the first floor.  Luck and good measurements were on our side, we hit wall cavities every time!

Step 3 - connect the wires and fold them into the boxes

We stripped the wires and made any connections we needed, then nicely push all the wires into the box.  This is how we are leaving the wires until the rough electrical inspection.

Step 4 - Cheat and connect the outlets before inspection

We decided we can't go without power to the living room for long and we can't get inspected until the basement wiring is all done, so we were good and left the bedroom wires at step 3 but were bad and connected everything up in the living room and dining room so we can have "temporary power" until the inspection.  I'm pretty sure the inspector will understand and we'll just shut off power and disconnect the outlets right before the inspector stops by.

We love knowing our outlets are grounded, tamper resistant, and safely wired, but the best part is getting to use the switch to turn on and off the lamps