When I got home on Monday night, Brian told me we needed to have the exact dimensions for the fireplace, we needed to know what kind of sink was going into the bathroom and that we needed to move the spot for the egress window.

Wait…what??  I thought I had time for these important and life altering decisions!  Ugh and double UGH!! 

There are a lot of decisions to make in fully finishing a whole floor on a house.  Especially when you have to make structural changes to the foundation, like banging a hole in the wall and putting in a big egress window on the FRONT of your house.  Not happy that it is going to involve pulling up 2 perfectly good bushes (the dead one is A-okay to go, though!) to put it in and rerouting our sump pump line to the backyard.  It is what it is, and at least it will be south facing and be bigger than the original one would have been.  It will have much more light coming into my craftroom this way.  Yay!  Hopefully in rerouting the sump line we won’t have to worry about it freezing every spring, too.  Double Yay!   Unfortunately it will mean a bit too long of a waiting period to get it in.  Not happy about that.

OH!  And when they cracked through the floor to reroute the plumbing the water was 2 inches below the cement in the gravel.  Our lovely sump pump had stopped working due to the float not floating right or somethin’, but at least it wasn’t there all the time.  Within a few hours it had pumped it all back out.  Whew!  Disaster averted!  The guys were looking at that in dismay.

Now the key is to chose things that we like that don’t cost a fortune and a half.  That home equity line isn’t as much as it could have been about 2 years ago.  We have found some good deals and sales on things like the murphy bed and bathroom vanity.  It doesn’t all need to be top of the line, since it can still look nicely done with selectively choosing materials.

I had one heck of a time finding a reasonably priced wallbed to use with our existing mattress.  I finally found one, and I can get it unfinished.  It will have cabinets next to it, so I’ll just paint everthing the same color to match.  I have an idea of how to put it all together so it looks nice, but we’ll see if my plan comes to fruition.  Also, it will be cheaper for me to paint everthing…though, I’m not entirely thrilled with the prospect of more cabinet painting.   *sigh*

My design plan is coalescing in my little mind and I’m pretty pumped at how it’s going to turn out.  I went looking for a furniture style vanity for the bathroom at Homegoods and came home with a big clock instead.  It has all my colors and is rather cool looking.  I have a great idea for painting the main living area, since you just know I can’t just paint a wall.  I have to PAINT IT!   😀

One thing to keep in mind if you are doing everything yourself and with help from friends…order everything you can EARLY.  There’s a wait on our window, a wait on our wine cellar door, cabinets, etc., etc.  When you just want it done this can be a bit frustrating.

The guys got a lot done this past week.  The basement is framed up, the plumbing is roughed in and we have our electrical done as of Saturday from another “someone who knows someone”.  I think they all really like to get some weekend side jobs to pay the bills.  We appreciate that they are available to get it done.  Everyone’s happy.

Oh, and if you are interested I also did a maternity session this past Thursday.  You can see it here.  In other news, my niece Sara got engaged to her boyfriend who proposed during basic training graduation (well, not DURING the graduation, but while she was in South Carolina for it).  Congratulations Sara and Jayson!

Oh, and my house is a mess.  Really, really messy.