Playing Catch Up

So, hello, welcome back, its been a while.  I'm going to make a better effort to keep this blog up to date now that summer is over and the kids are in school one day a week.  I hope all my friends and family who read this are all doing well.

First things first.  Everyone here is healthy and happy and growing like crazy.  What more could we ask for right??!  I'll have a kid update soon.  They are all so stinking cute right now I can't even handle it.

Second, the basement project is sort of done now.  The big stuff anyway.  I was holding off writing a blog because there are little decor things that I'm not quite done with, but I suppose that just makes for more blog posts down the road.  This house is forever in transformation so I'm just going to get on with it.

So here we are: The main view from the stairs.  It's like a breath of fresh air.  At least when I can't smell the kids shoes in the new mudroom which is now behind me on the other side of the stairs here.

There is nothing about this that I miss.

And everything about this, I LOVE.

My new mudroom built from useless garage space. A photo of this room is too hard to capture, but you get the idea.

 Next would be the TV and fireplace area.  This corner is still weird for a TV, we've gone from having the furniture on and angle, then flush to the wall with the TV on an angle, and now back again.  I hate furniture on an angle, but it seems to work best that way.  One day maybe we'll mount it on the wall with one of those arm things, but its got to be a big one because now we can turn the TV out the back door and watch games from the back patio.  Pretty nice right?

The prints on the wall are Star Wars prints I purchased for John on Etsy.  They are pretty cool, even though I've never seen all 3 movies all the way through.  And I still need a fireplace screen...

 This is the same view really just out to the patio.  Its really nice when we can let the fall breezes blow though this door on a Saturday.

And my favorite transformation: The kitchenette.  We kept it simple, but moving the refrigerator and putting in some proper cabinets makes it a much more usable space that lacks spider dens and 7+ year old dried up cat foot nuggets.  I want to put some industrial looking open shelving over the sink and maybe some of my own art between the sconces, but it works for now.

The buffet wall works great for parties!

The bath was also a pretty big change but my photos are terrible.  The lighting is pretty bad in here, even if it is new.  Nothing really super special about it, but it fits with the 1960's feel of the house and it is neutral.

I cannot find a mirror for this weird skinny wall.  Any suggestions??!

The other side of the bath is the laundry, now with cabinets that are actually uniform in size and a folding counter.  My laundry chute drops into the far left cabinet and you would never even know it was there.

We painted the unfinished cabinets and my polyurethane coating turned the center panels yellow.  I will be correcting this somehow, someday...for a later post.

We decided to remove the storage closet under the stairs (seen on the right in the above photo of the old kitchen).  It was an odd shape and you could never get to the stuff in the way back.  Mainly it stored my extra dishes and vases and random kid stuff.  Since the dishes and vases were going into the new kitchenette cabinets, and the kid stuff into a garage sale, we decided to make the space an office.  Our desk and printer cabinet fit just perfectly.  This also prevents us from becoming hoarders because we have no place to store anything other than the attic.

Don't mind the mess on the desk, but really, we LIVE here. This is what it looks like most of the time.

So speaking of what this room looks like most of the time... It is mainly a kids' space after all, and we do not pick it up every day.  So as much as I'd like everyone to think that this is how I live,

this is actually how I LIVE.  And it's pretty great.

This photo is really a pretty tame toy explosion.  Good thing Santa is coming soon, we're running low on toys...