The Kids Have Bedrooms!

I realized the other day that I had never given you an update on our basement after the kids bedrooms were finished!  My bad!  Back in April (holey crap, has it been that long?!) I did a post on the basement beginning it's renos.  We were rushing to get the basement to a point where my hubby could tackle the rest of the job on his own while the kids and I were off at tree planting camp where I am the cook for 3 months every year.

The kids rooms were in boxes and the basement was on it's way to getting done.  We had waited a long time for this, and I was at the point where I'd had enough waiting and wanted the kids into proper finished bedrooms before they moved out! Hence, our decision to hire someone to come in and do the job for us.  My hubby is not really very good at finishing things.  He has the desire, but not the skill.  He tends to get part way through a project, and then moves on to another.  The entire journey to renovate and finish the Shack has been like this.  Half done projects all over the place.  It drives me nuts!!  Anyways, enough venting...

We agreed that the bedrooms needed to be FINISHED by the time the kids and I returned from camp in July so the kids would have rooms to move into.  I had added the motivator of holding a family reunion at the Shack in August, so we had to have them done by then.  I really wanted the whole basement done when we got home, but this wasn't to be the case.  The 2 bedrooms were done though.  Thank goodness!  

I got an amazing deal on 4x8 beadboard from Home Depot to finish the walls of the whole basement in.  That is a story in itself.  I had looked on line for something that wasn't gyproc to do the walls in.  I really didn't want to deal with puttying, sanding, drying times....Plus our builder didn't 'do' drywalling.  So, I found what I thought was the perfect solution.  4X8 sheets of white beadboard.  And the price?!  It was only $12.99 a sheet!  Ready to be painted, easy to install...Perfect!  We made the trip to Home Depot, which for us is an hours drive over logging roads, with the truck, so we could bring it all home.  The website said they had enough sheets in stock, so we expected to be able to just get it all in one trip. 

Upon arriving at the store, I searched for the sheets, but couldn't locate them.  A sale associate helped me and also couldn't find them.  He then made the connection that the 4x8 sheets I was looking for were not actually priced at $12.99.  They were $30 a sheet!  The sheets that were $12.99 were actually only 4x3 in size!  What the heck!!!  He showed me the website, and although I argued that the site said they were 4x8, he said he could only offer me a $5 discount on them.  Well, that was a shocker.  We decided to go to the other Home Depot which is less than an hour away and see if the results would be different.  We got the same answer, but were also given the manager's name to contact about it. 

Back at home, without anything to finish the basement walls with, I went into action.  I made sure of my information first. I was right.  The website page said they were 4x8 sheets. Then, I contacted the Home Depot via their website.  I was put in touch with a part of their company that deals with problems customers have with the stores.  I was very impressed.  This department works for the customer, on their behalf, when discrepancies arise with the stores, website, etc.  They went to bat for me!  It was amazing!  I didn't need to talk to anyone else. They contacted me on the phone, got the story, contacted the store, and made it right!  In the end, I got all the sheets I needed for $12.99!  It was a lot of sheets too...I had figured it out and needed about 65 of them!  You can  see how the price difference made a huge difference!  Not only did they get me that price, they also got them delivered!  We had made the costly trip into Home Depot in our truck and were out gas money.  So, they arranged to have the whole lot delivered to the Shack!  I was thrilled!  Having anything delivered out here is expensive, so this was wonderful! 

Back to the renos!

We had found a man through some friends who were building a house.  They hired him to do jobs they didn't want to deal with, he worked cheap and did a great job!  So, we got Al!  Al is a wiry little man, who works hard and is more honest than most. He has to drive 40km to get to our house to work, and we are charged for part of that time, which is more than fair.  He doesn't charge people he works for in town to drive to their homes, so he feels he should take off the first 15 minutes of driving time from the trip out here.  Then, when he is working, if he stops to chat to us, he makes a note of it and deducts that from his working time.  He is a smoker, and takes several 'smoke' breaks, but we are not charged for that either!  We make him coffee, but he insists on bringing his own lunch.  Then there is his wife!  I have yet to meet this wonderful lady, but almost every day Al came out, he brought me plants for the garden sent by her!  Wow!!  I had a hard time keeping up with getting them all in the ground!  

Now, the kids and I didn't get to meet Al until we were home from camp, but we heard stories from Trev about the work he was doing and how dedicated he was to having the kids rooms completely finished for them by the tine we got home.  The idea had been for Trev to be his assistant on his days off.  Unfortunately, Trev ended up with a broken hand after he swerved to miss one of the many deer in the area and totaled our little Toyota Echo.  He was home, but  not really capable of using tools. Al was good company for him while we were gone though.

By the time we got home at the end of July, Al had pretty much finished the 2 bedrooms and done some rewiring in the basement.  He had insisted on painting them so the kids could move right in. The results were wonderful!!  Alley and Zac were thrilled! 

Here are the rooms!

This is Zac's room...we had a loft bed built into the room for him.  Trev found  some twisty cottonwoods to use as supports, and Al added a ladder and put shelves into the box you can see at the end of the bed for Zac's books.  Zac's room door is on the landing at the bottom of the basement stairs, so he has a neat entrance into his room with a couple of stairs down into it.

Here is his door, coming in from the landing.  Al built a bookshelf into the wall behind the door where our telephone wiring is located. The whole shelf will slide out if  we need access to the wires.  Zac chose green for his walls.  It is a lovely shade and keeps the room feeling bright and clean.

Alley's room..she wanted a light blue on her walls.  Here she has begun to move in.  This shot shows her door  which is located across the basement 'hall' from Zac's, but is on ground level. 

Alley's big closet!  Al installed lights inside the kids closets as well.

The kids are still in the process of moving into their rooms, but are loving having their own spaces with doors, light switches and ceilings!  After almost 5 years of living in roughed in rooms without doors or light switches and looking up at the underside of the floor upstairs, this is a real treat!  We still have tons to do in the basement, and Al will be back out to help us.  This summer, we plan to get the rest of it done and then tackle the sunroom after that.  Always something to do.  In my next post, I'll show you how Al helped finish off the deck!