You know I couldn’t stick with a plan. My life just doesn’t work that way.
Again, I rearranged my priorities and the things that needed to get done to fit those priorities. The cats getting access to the basement is still a priority, but the things I needed to get done for that to happen have changed up a little.
I realized that the mess of cutting the flooring was not something I wanted to attempt if the cats could get into the basement because that would end in disaster. That meant I had to finish the floor into the other room. Hubby very generously gave me his last vacation day and the two of us spent 12 hours getting that room done.
Originally, the floor stopped just at the wall between the two rooms. Now the second room is done. All that is left for the floor is to install the transition pieces where the floor stops and there won’t be trim or anything else for it to butt up against.
Even this, though, required a bit of a plan change. When we were cleaning the space to prep for installing, we realized that the floor dipped too much around the sump pump pit and that the pit came out of the recessed area into the room more than we realized so we couldn’t just go against that wall on that side (left side of the first image). We talked about several things as a fix to the issue, but I finally decided that I’m just going to build some low bookshelves that would sit in front of the concrete walls and would end at the floor edge.
The goal is that we don’t want to have to hire anyone else to come in and build more walls. We hadn’t intended to fully finish the rest of the basement, but do a sort of semi-finish that we could do on our own. The bookshelf solution allows us to keep to that plan. We may need someone to build the closet around the sump pit area, but that is all we want done.
Now that the floor is down in both rooms, the bulk of the mess is finally done. There are some things that will be messy, but a lot of that is going to shift to the garage. I have some painting I need to do on the rest of the trim pieces and boards I need to work with. I’ll be putting plastic down on this new floor to protect it so I can do that in all that open space.
Once the paint is done, it will leave putting the stair trim up and trimming out the upper door. I think that is the point I need to be to let the cats back down. There are still a lot of things left to do to finish off my room, but I’m pretty sure that most of that can be done if the cats are down there. Maybe.
I have to get to that point before I can work on MCG’s room, which is my next step. We will be helping her move in at the end of the month, so I’m on a deadline to get her space ready.
Sadly, I cannot shut my silly brain up. I keep coming up with ideas for all of these spaces and each new idea is that much more work. This is becoming the never ending project. At this rate, I just might get lucky to get into my room to actually work on something other than building it by Christmas.
If I’m lucky.
