Finishing the basement

  When we purchased our home back in 2010 we had every intention of finishing our basement. We had other projects we first took on like knocking out the kitchen wall and building the island. We started our basement renovation in September of 2010, and Brendan started spraying the trim last weekend. I am honestly brought to tears with how close we are to being done. We have done 95% of the work ourselves. Brendan used to build homes in his previous life so he's pretty darn handy. The one job we did hire out was finishing the sheet rock. Brendan absolutely loathes finishing it and I was a million weeks pregnant with Kate when we were finishing it so we sucked it up and paid for it to be done. One project that we didn't anticipate that we would have to take on when finishing the basement was a leaky foundation...This past spring there was a lovely little stream of water that was running on the floor of the basement when it would rain really hard. We wanted to seal the foundation before the ground froze and before we put carpet and hardwood down. This past October we rented a bobcat and dug a 9 foot hole next to our house ::cue panic on my end:: again I say we lightly. Brendan jumped up in the bobcat and dug the hole next to Kate's window and then sealed the crack. 

   These were taken when Brendan was in the process of digging the large the hole.  After he had the hole dug, he then had to dig some by hand.  At one point he said to me " come check on me every so often to make sure the hole doesn't cave in."  I felt so uplifted by the comment... Drew however loved that there was a BIG tractor at his house for the day!

Thankfully we were able to get the crack sealed and running lots and lots of water over the foundation we are confident that our new basement will be free of leaks, in that spot anyway.

This basement renovation has not been easy, or stress free, but I am so thankful that my husband has been able to the majority of the work himself.  We will love having this extra space to spread out and enjoy.  Hopefully just a few short weeks and we will be down there with CARPET!