Saturday morning. Daddy being a good sport and playing Tripoly with the kids.
Adorable kids…
Mommy trying to pick up her camera and use it again…
The rest of the space…
February 4, 2010 – 5:00 am
Here we are…finally at the end. All we have to do now is decorative touches, so the walls need some lovin’ yet. I generally like to buy things piecemeal. That way, I find the “right” pieces at the right prices. It might be a bit before I find everything to really finish the rooms.
Here we are at the bottom of the stairs…exciting right?
Straight ahead is the excercise room…that has actually seen some exercise. Not overly exciting. Pretty bare walls and a foam floor. We have had the elliptical and Bowflex for years, but they have been rather unloved in recent years. The little flatscreen is a new acquisition. Hopefully we can watch something interesting while working off all that beer we drank with our friends during construction.
Next we are turning right and see the lovely bathroom and two storage closets. The big one is the “Christmas Closet”, as that is how much stuff I have for decorating for Christmas. Well, it’s not quite full of just Christmas stuff…yet. We still have some bins up in the garage attic that need to be moved. Then it will be full.
Take another right turn and we are going down the hall to the wine cellar and our entertaining room. The flooring here is cork, so it is nice and warm and sound dampening. I can only image how loud that wine cellar cooling unit would be if it were tile here. 
Our entertaining space! The floor is a 16 inch tile layed on a diagonal. The motifs on the walls are ones that I drew on heavy plastic, cut out, taped to the wall and painted with a copper paint. Not too hard, just hard to photograph. The french doors off to the side lead into my craftroom.
We have a countertop height table with bench and stool seating. Brian found it on clearance and then we just had to buy some matching stools for it. It’s really comfortable and washable. I believe the bench seating is pleather, but the stools are leather. Having it up higher is rather nice, since our tile in this area is not heated. It’s a bit chilly. This keeps your feet off the ground just far enough so they can stay warmer.
The original lookout windows behind the table looks into our backyard…underneath the deck. The designer for this house was a freakin’ genious in how he laid everthing out. Having the one big window in the space be hidden underneath a deck is just brilliant planning.
Inside of the wine cellar (showed that picture previously). We put cedar casing around the door (you can see it below off the wet bar), because of a flub-up with the trim order. Yeah…you’re shocked right?? Ah well, the cedar matches the door, so the error for this part worked out fine. It looks nice like this, and you can tell this is a “special” room since it is trimmed out different. We ended up putting a humidifier in there. We tried to put a little fountain in it, and while she was quite pretty, all the water ended up on the floor.
This is our wet bar next to the wine cellar. We have a beverage fridge and a two drawer dishwasher. Underneath the cabinets are a whole lot of wine glass storage. We wanted these cabinets higher, so the wine glasses had room to hang if we had lots of stuff on the countertop, which happens when we entertain down here. The countertop is Silestone Quartz. We had to order the more expensive version because of a flub-up with the cabinet ordering. Lots of flub-ups in this basement due to rather poor customer service and people that apparently don’t know how to do their job. It was quite annoying and maddening. The Home Depot is not my favorite anymore after all the things they screwed up.
Then here is our lovely furnace-rated stone fireplace. In keeping with a rustic type of feel that we wanted down here, we did a random stone layout on it. The mantle is a solid piece of limestone with a rough cut on the edges, so it isn’t perfectly smooth and beveled. We chose to get the fireplace in an upgraded version so it could really pump out the heat to a bigger area. This is a basement afterall. It can warm up the room in no time flat. It’s very pretty, too.
We bought the chairs last week, but we need a rug and some reading lights yet. The big chair is a chair and a half and is microfiber. Super comfy. The other chair is leather and tapestry and it is a recliner. That one was on clearance and barely fit in the Acadia when we brought it home. This will be a good place to curl up and read a book in front of the fire. Now we have several places to curl up and read! 
So there you have it. The finished basement!
The spa guest bathroom *swoon*
February 3, 2010 – 5:00 am
Beautiful vanity? Check
Fantastic tile shower? Check
Nicest bathroom in the house that will get used the least? Check!
Key features and how we done its:
The floor has heated coils underneath that we had put in by an electrician. They are about the same moola as the pads at the big box home improvement stores. My mother requested it…so there ya go Mom! The ceramic tile looks like bamboo and is a rectangular shape. The display at the tile store had it offset at an angle, so that is how we had our friends put it in. The base around the wall is the floor tile cut up. Much cheaper than buying a base that probably wouldn’t match as well. After having wood base in the bathrooms upstairs…do a tile base for your own sanity.
The shower is a mixture of different natural stones and ceramic tile, which I showed a close up of before. The floor is a slate hexagon mosaic tile, the large wall tiles are ceramic, and the large cream hexagon mosaic is travertine. The bullnose and finger tiles are a natural stone and mosaic swirly design is a mixture of slate and natural stone. Pretty pretty!
We had them build a box inbetween the wall studs for shampoo, soap, etc, plus we had them put in a corner bench…my dad requested that one. 
You can buy a box that goes inbetween the studs, but it is probably cheaper to just make one with cement board and 2×4’s.
The window used to be one of those tiny basement windows, and we had them put in one that was the same width but taller. Now there is actual lighting into the space. The window is hidden in a little hill on the back of the house, so if someone is outside they really can’t see in very well. Unless they are purposely trying to see in. Could happen. ;)
The vanity I found at Overstock.com, and the mirror and little stool are from Homegoods. The vanity has enough room for the plush brown towels, tp and soap/shampoo/extra toothbrushes. The hooks are on the wall for the towels to hang. The metal artwork, I also acquired from Homegoods. The one thing I want yet is a piece of earthen colored pottery for the window ledge. I think I will wait until the Renaissance Festival this fall to get a hand crafted piece from one of the artisans. I finally have a place I want to put a piece, so I’m excited to finally have a reason to buy something from them.
So…we had a problem. About 2 weeks or so after the guys had completed all the work, I went into the bathroom to find an issue. In a line down the wall next to the vanity were water bubbles under the paint. I may have swore a few times when I saw that. We figured out that it was coming from the bathroom above, where the floor was replaced. We stopped using it to minimize the damage below, and had the guys come again to fix whatever was broken. Turns out the water pipe in the toilet above was cracked and gushing water whenever it was flushed. They fixed the pipe, redid the drywall and sprayed the texture again. I just had to repaint (which was a pain since the vanity was so close to the wall). At least it is fixed and looks nice again. I can tell the difference in the texture, but hopefully most people won’t be able to really see it.
What do you think? Does it look like a spa?
Knitting while watching tv to while away the winter
February 2, 2010 – 5:00 am
During our vacation break I kept busy. When I wasn’t reading, I made a few items on my knifty knitter looms.
Gray wool armwarmers using the flower loom. About 35 rows in the round, then 7 back and forth for the thumb and then another 5 rows in the round. I only used one yarn for this, but it was a thick wool.
A long black decorative scarf using Patons silk bamboo yarn. This is several movies into it and at least 2 yards long. It is wrapped several times around my neck here, but I wanted it nice and long so I used the whole 102 yards of yarn for it. It is super soft.
Black short scarf. I used two yarns on this. One was a boucle and one was a fur fringe, and it took awhile. Many, many hours (I’d say at least 5 or 6). I am using a nice silver pin I purchased from my friend that sells Silpada jewelry to close it. This and the armwarmers above kept me nice and warm at a scrapbooking day at a local church. It was freezing there, just like last time. Of course, when I was driving there it was -19…that may have had something to do with it. I was prepared this year, though.
I also made a short brown scarf. Too short for me actually, so it went to Kailan. Just as well…he lost the fleece scarf I made him a few winters ago. Sorry, I didn’t get a picture of it, yet. Hopefully at one point I’ll catch a shot of him wearing it. I have no idea what he did with the hat I made him. I’m surprised he has any gloves yet, as well. He is not so good about keeping track of his stuff. Ah, kids!
On another photography note, I took these pictures with my old D50. Apparently my remote doesn’t work with my D300s. *sigh* I need to do some research to figure out what I can get for a wireless remote, without it costing a kidney.
On another weather related note, I hope that groundhog tells us that winter is over soon. We are ready for some warm breezes up here. Last week we were in the negative degrees again. It also snowed yesterday. It sucks most spectacularly.
And on yet another note…I did FINALLY get pictures of the basement this weekend. Hopefully I will have a few posts up this week on it.
That is all…
Jeans…apparently recession proof
February 1, 2010 – 5:00 am
I know, I know…I wasn’t going to buy clothes. Didn’t take me long to break that resol…errr, goal, did it??
Well, you know how us women are. We lose a little weight and we get all giddy and need to buy some new clothes to celebrate. I honestly didn’t buy much in the last few years, so I think I get a pass. That’s what I’m tellin’ myself anyways! BwaaHahahahahaha!
I forayed into The Buckle where they have long pants, which is a prerequisite for me. It is from all those years of riding horses, and having your jeans ride up over your boots if they were too short. The store had lots of expensive jeans, and not so many sales. Apparently they don’t make long jeans for a reasonable price.
The young, perky salesgirl was ever so helpful in picking out some jeans for me. Since her jeans looked a size too small, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that what she was picking for me were a bit small. Last time I went to buy jeans, I think it was with this same gal. I had given her what I thought was my size. Notsomuch. Now they did actually fit for the most part. Huzzah!
It’s funny when you are of a “mature” age, and the young store clerks pick things out to just help ya out a bit. She produced for me several pairs of jeans with zippers about 2 inches long that I could barely squeeze into and they certainly didn’t do me any favors. Do I look like I’m 16?? I’ve had CHILDREN. I’m thinking something with a little higher crotch will have to do. Of course, that is nearly impossible to find these days.
Also?? Can I just say how annoying it is to get into a changing room with NO MIRROR? Seriously it irritates the hell out of me. I realize they want you to come out so they can lie to you and say you look like Angelina Jolie in that and here’s five more things that would go fabulously with it. It just makes me want to quick try on things and get the heck out of that store.
Anyways, so I tried on the jeans, found some that fit, looked decent and were fabulously overpriced. I bent down to see just how much of a butt crack was going to show and isn’t that how you decide on what jeans to buy? What?? Have you seen how many butt cracks are out in public these days?
I settled on two that I loved, swallowed hard and whipped out the old credit card. You can always take them back, right?? I brought them home to see how they really looked since I couldn’t decide on just one but really didn’t want to buy both. I also made sure I could return one since stores are getting all wacko about their return policies these days.
You can return this article (but only within the next ten minutes after buying it otherwise we will give you store credit that you can’t use on sale items or anything remotely discounted and can only use it during the full moon) with a receipt.
I settled for these. Just a little bling to make the day shiny, right? Anya agreed with me that the sparkle was pretty cool. They weren’t cheap, but not the most expensive in the store. What is up with the price of jeans?? There were hardly any sales in the store either. Obviously we need to produce more jeans to get us out of this economic slump.
You know you are a blogger when you post a picture of your butt on the internets for all the world to see just to show off your cool new jeans.