I didn't even mind that the door was locked and I had to load in groceries myself. Simply amazing progress.
This is where he was an hour before:
The ladder on loan is loaned out to the loaner. Sad but true. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry. It is an embarrassing situation that needs to be documented.
I have to believe that we are farther than 50% on the beams now and all the work on the far wall was done in 2-3 hours this week.
Remember--I don't get to live upstairs til the sanding is done so this is very exciting for me. Even though recently someone told me the basement is "homey" I beg to differ. As much as a basement CAN be "homey" that is true, since we live in it. But isn't "homey" how you describe something small and stuffy in a nice way? Much like "quaint" and "rustic".
Oh and I don't always talk like a parrot(Peek a boo! in the video) Old habits die hard. Long live Zen the Orange Winged Amazon!
Back story on the beam for anyone reading that hasn't heard us complain about it:
When we bought the house, the beams, the beautiful solid old growth (pine?) wood beams were....
PAINTED white!!!
A terrible terrible shame that Travis was intent on setting right from the minute we saw them.
As you can see in the pics below compared to above, he has spent 52 hours standing on a ladder stripping, scrapping and sanding. Only 12 more or so to go! It probably took whomever painted them less than an hour to create this great character building event for Travis.
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| Travis does not approve this beam |
Good job, Travis! Those beams will look beautiful when they are stripped and all the wonderful natural grain is showing. Do you plan to finish them with polyurethane? Or are you leaving them completely natural?
ReplyDeleteHomey is good. I think of homey as cozy and comfortable. Still, I bet you will be thrilled when you can finally move allllll the way into your house.
Did you change the name of your blog? Didn't it use to be Garden Hijack?
ReplyDeleteI can't say on the finishing of the beam-That is all Travi. Maybe he will chime in if we fill up his inbox with comments :)
ReplyDeleteAs for the blog, it began as it is now, but the garden was the only thing I talked about all summer, so there WAS an official take over in August. But now mostly back to work on the house...but the garden is in my blood and I will continue to post about it too!
I am all for wood beams and wood grain, I cringe when people paint over real wood. I know many people like the look of all one color, but give me the natural, beautiful character of wood to look at ANY time.
ReplyDeleteYou are so cheerful for someone who is living in the basement; house renovations make me nuttier than usual and we haven't even started doing any yet. I'm following your progress with great interest. Travis has got to have a sore back, neck and shoulders from doing all that sanding, ouch! Following along, Karen
I'm conflicted on whether to treat them and leave them the color they are or to go with a red/cherry color. I've always been a fan of old wood furniture that had that dark red color to it with really cushy black leather cushions, so I'm really leaning that direction.
ReplyDeleteWhatever I choose, I'll most definitely have to be happy with it because I'm NEVER going through this again :)