Remodeling the Basement.

I don't know about all of you but around our house projects never end. It's been from one thing to the other with barely a break in between, ever since we moved to this house! First was a bathroom down in the basement for the boys, next came removing the pool in the deck and creating of the garden. Painting our girls room and building a custom bunk bed was one of the many little projects squeezed into our spare time=) We had a breather during our first winter but were back at it the following year with filling in the deck, and remodeling our little shed into a chicken coop. Of course the last project was the backyard makeover which is still in its final stages.

The next enterprise, that of remodeling our basement, had been in idea stage for a very long time, before finally emerging a couple weeks ago when...

...we began to tear down the wall. You see the former residents of our house had partitioned the basement into two separate rooms, by throwing up some paneling on top of the carpet.

Our plan was to create a bigger family room and gathering place by taking down the wall and putting the boys (who at the moment were residing in one of the two rooms) into another part of the basement which was being used as Dad's office, and moving Dad's desk and bookshelves into the larger family room.

And the wall comes tumbling down!

We took down the entire wall in one afternoon, but that was just the beginning.

We had to move all the boys stuff as well as Dads office equipment. Then the walls had to be painted, and the strip of missing carpeting filled in.

Ta da! We were blessed to get a professional carpet installer for a reasonable price who did an incredible job filling in the gap.

It began to look a little bit like we wanted, but we were still debating on how to finish of the walls to make it look like one complete room.

We began to move in dads shelves and books anyway, and slowly the room began to take shape.

We finally decided to leave the top of the wall cream, have a white chair rail, and paint the bottom (over the wallpaper on the one side) a chocolate brown color that we happened to have a full bucket of.

The result!

I think it turned out really nice with the two tone, and it is ready just in time for all our gatherings we will have while the boys are home.

~Chs

A frozen world.

One cold morning, before John came home, Josiah and I ventured outback to check out the pond and river. This is what we found.

A frozen world.


We were thrilled to find the pond completely frozen over!


After playing around with the camera for a little while, Josiah gave it to me and began to blissfully "skate."

"The Waltzing Skater"

So the next morning Faith ran out with Josiah and I to go ice skating!


First though we had to clear off the snow which had fallen on the pond during the night. As soon as both of them had stepped on the pond, ominous cracking sounds were to be heard coming from the ice beneath their feet. We therefore decided to only allow one person at a time on the pond to minimize the danger.


So skating was disqualified at our pond but two of us were able to skate some at our neighbors and enjoyed it immensely.

I promise to post some more soon about the things we have done with the boys, and there will be a lot to tell, I assure you. I will try not to make you wait to long;)

~Chs