A Mousy Makeover

I guess Paul and I have never really "counted" the basement as a livable space.  We had only really used it for extra storage, or for an extra place to sleep when we had guests, or for a short retreat from a super hot summer day.  The real problem is that someone living there before us had cats, and apparently they let their cats pee on the carpet once or twice, because the whole basement had a faint undertone of cat pee.  But then again, maybe it was just mouse pee.

Sick. 

We brought Griffin to the house before we bought it to see if he got any paranormal hits, but all he did was run straight to the basement and pee on the carpet.  I guess it smelled so bad to him that he thought it was the outdoors.  So my point is that we have always wanted to put new carpet in the basement and repaint the walls.  That is all we wanted to do.  Here is a picture of what the basement looked like prior to The Mice.

But the Lord works in mysterious ways, because after The Mice came to live at our house Paul decided that no way, never, not ever was he going to leave the poopy ceiling tiles in the basement.  I just told him to do whatever he wanted since I was so stressed out about the whole thing.  Tearing down the ceiling tiles and replacing the carpet soon turned into calling a contractor, bumping out a wall, replacing the electrical, and so on.  And when I returned from D.C. I came down to the basement to find this:

 

After I pooped my pants, Paul explained that after pulling down the ceiling tiles he realized the idiot living here before us thought he was an electrician and wired the whole basement himself.  There were all kinds of fire hazards and issues that needed to be addressed.  We couldn't quite afford an electrician at $80 per hour for three days worth of work so we called our brother-in-law, Chad, an electrical engineer.  To the entire Moore Family and God, I thank you again here for blessing us with your help.  The electrical work in our basement was really a threat to our whole family, and it turns out that if those mice had wings they would have been angels (or bats).  Chad and family came to our house on three separate occasions to help Paul with the wiring.  When they were done the basement looked like this:

Then my dad helped Paul replace an old pipe.  Then Michael, our contractor and friend, framed in our new walls.  Then came drywall.  The basement looked like this:

Paul and our friend Matt borrowed a paint sprayer from an old football buddy.  They sprayed the ceiling and then painted the walls the following day.  We were then left with this:

Let me just stop right here to say how lucky you are to get such instant gratification.  Paul slaved over this basement for days on end, tearing away layer after layer of old drywall, dust, mouse poop, and carpet.  Michael spent a month waiting for us to move all of the garbage from the basement to the garage to the trash can (and the neighbor's trash can and the other neighbor's trash can) all in an effort to save on dumpster and demolition costs, which, by the way, was a horrible plan.  And after a whole month of waiting he came in and finished the job in less than two weeks.  Even though both Paul and Michael were so amazing, I spent the same amount of time rocking back and forth in a corner, afraid of what would come next.  Everything looks so much less stressful on HGTV.  And it all happens in thirty to sixty minute segment.  I'm just saying, as a blog reader myself, I can appreciate getting to see the entire project from start to finish in less than three minutes. 

Where was I?  So Michael finished up the trim work on Wednesday, and we finished painting and patching the floors on Thursday.  On Friday the carpet was installed.  Now we have a finished product that looks like this:

When you live in a really old house with beautiful wood floors everyone says it is a shame to cover them with carpet, and for the most part I agree.  But after a while you realize that it doesn't matter how pretty those floors are, because they are cold and uncomfortable and creaky and... well, it is just really nice to have a room with carpet.  The whole family agrees.  Chloe was so excited that she could hardly contain herself.  She was doing laps in the room just screaming and laughing.  She kept falling over and rolling around.  Paul and I were making carpet angels, and Griffin was being all narcoleptic just curling up and falling asleep every three steps.  We are super happy to have a new room in our very old house!

*By the way, if you are looking for a great contractor in the area try Michael Triant of Sarafis Designs.