Project Basement!

 We love having a basement here in Kansas!  It's fun because it is a whole extra floor in your house- lots of extra room!!  This house has a finished walk-out basement and it had a half bath.  Since we will primarily use our basement for guests that come and stay, we thought it would be nice to have a full bath down there so that no one has to travel up 2 floors to go and shower.  It wasn't a top priority (like had to be done before we moved in), but it was pretty high on the list!  After we had one round of guests, we knew that we wanted to kick the project into high gear and just get it done!  We had about 5 contractors come out and give us bids and they were all WAY more than we wanted to pay.  Ryan, AKA Handy Manny, knew about what the costs would be and after bid number 4 or so of about 7K over cost, he knew this would be a Ryan project!  Love my handy hubby!  The pic on the right and below are the "before" pics.  Nice little half bath.  Nothing too fancy!  There was a door at the back that led to an extra storage area.

 Step 1:  Tear down walls!  This was the easy part!  Just knock the walls down and wa-la!  Room for a tub and shower!  Ryan had to remove the shelving from the concrete walls and re-locate them to another area.  This required lots of fun new tools!  :) 

 Step 2:  Rent Jackhammer from Home Depot and jackhammer through 5 inches of concrete deep and about 8 feet long.  This, my friends, was a major undertaking.  Jackhammers are not for the weak I tell ya!  This was major hard work!  After the jackhammering was done, I got to help dig out BAGS and BAGS full of concrete rocks and then manually carry them uphill to the garage.  I should have earned a big gold medal for all of that work.  There is a reason I am not in construction!! 

 The view from the door.  Same view as the first picture above.  Now the wall is knocked down and open. 

 Ryan framed the wall and installed a new door so that we still have some storage back there.  It used to be a big L-shaped storage area, now it is just one strip.  Make sense?

 The lovely "before" vanity.  We painted this, got a new counter top, all new fixtures and a new mirror. 

 Ben, of course, was in awe of all the working going on. Drills, hammers, nails.  Ben was in heaven!  He would just stare up at Ryan in amazement.  :)  When Ryan was about to drill or something, Ben would cover his ears and say,  "U-bout be loud?"

 Sheet rock is up!  This was another very hard thing to do.  I "got" to help with this part too! ;)  Sheet rock is very heavy, especially the mold-resistant kind like we got.  We had to life a big piece up to the ceiling, while standing on a ladder and I had to hold the big piece above my head while Ryan nailed it in.  Not easy peeps, not easy!  This was the hardest part of the whole thing!  Oh yes, and see that hole in the ceiling?  It is for the vent.  We got all the sheet rock up on the ceiling and then Ryan realized he had not installed the air vent yet and so we had to take it ALL down.  AIGGGGGHHH!  I was not happy about this!  (Neither was Ryan!)  Tub is in below!

 Tape and bed the walls.  Don't look too closely, it is far from perfect! 

 The plumbing on the back side of the tub.  Ryan did have a licensed plumber come out and do all of the fittings and make sure the pipe was laid at the correct angles, etc.  Very important in a shower! 

 Getting close! 

 Addy took this pic of me and Ryan working!

 Aaaannnndd, the finished product!  This entire project took Ryan 6 days.  It was a LONG 6 days!  He had to tile the floor, paint all the walls, install all new trim (baseboards), paint the trim, install new vanity top, install new electrical and lights (that required a Sunday afternoon call to an electrician when Ryan almost electricuted himself!), install new sink fixtures, texture the ceiling and I am sure many more steps that I am just forgetting!    This was a major project!!!

 The new vanity area.  Oh, and I had not cleaned the mirror at this point!  So it does look better now!

 Another pic of the tub area!

I am so very proud of my hubby for this big undertaking.  Of course, like most big projects, he says he would NEVER do this again!  It was a lot of hard work, but WELL worth it!