white noise

We’re down to one last weekend before we are calling it quits through October so we can focus on Halloween. This was our plan last year and it worked out pretty good – no Halloween distractions while we’re doing basement work and vise-versa. With one coat of paint up things aren’t visually changing too much now. Seconds coats of paint are going up, shelves and cabinets are being hung, and some light fixtures are installed ‘for real’. Here’s a shot of the finished built-in shelves on one side of the screen. The lights are on a dimmer so you can set your ambiance versus distraction level accordingly.

The wet bar is taking shape, but there’s a LOT of work left to piece it all together. We’ll see how far it makes it to Halloween.

There also plenty of clean up needed before the annual party. Here’s a stack of empties we finally cleared out!

We now have at least one coat of color on about half of the basement. The wet bar is in pretty good shape having two coats already:

And here’s a wider shot of so you can see the color scheme a bit better:

The shelf for the rack components is looking good, too. I couldn’t wait to put the cover plates back on!

And here’s how half of the ceiling is shaping up:

There’s hours of tedious cut-in work when it comes to painting these different colors, but it’s coming together.

We finished the priming coat of paint at the end of last weekend – right on the planned schedule. Now we’re on to the first coat of color. There are five different colors in the main room – is that too many? It’s not as bad as it sounds. The theme is roughly brown and blue – again, not as bad as it may sound – with three shades of brown and two of bluish-purple. The colors are hard to judge while it’s in process, but it should turn out great.

The plan for the next week and a half is to finish the first coat (and second in some spots) and install the wet bar. After that comes door casing, caulking, and a second coat of paint. Floor and baseboards will likely have to wait till after the big party. We’re planning to shift most of our effort toward Halloween once October is here.

Painting continues. Last night I got half of hell’s ceiling primed. It took about 4.5 hours. Here’s a couple shots of the latest:

Labor Day weekend lived up to its name. I made a 4-day weekend out of it – and spent it all in the basement. Dad came down for the weekend as well, so Donna and I had some much needed help. It doesn’t get much more tedious then finishing a drywall job. This is where it all catches up with you – a little uneven framing here, a bubble in the tape there – it all has to go away in this stage. Coat, sand, rinse, repeat…until it all disappears.

When Sunday rolled around pretty much all the drywall was finished. The final tally was 45 gallons of mud. It was great to sweep up and know the end of dust-filled days was in sight. By the afternoon Donna and I began painting. We got two and half room primed that night.

Gradually the dark, dusty basement is finally looking like a real living space. Priming will continue throughout the week. Hopefully everything will be primed by the end of this weekend. Painting in general will be on-going for quite some time. We have 20 gallons of paint queued up (and probably more to come).