Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Home Stretch

Nicole and I got back up north last night. This is our final week on The Range! Nicole sees patients all day today (8:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.), then has one patient tomorrow and one on Thursday. Friday they are having a pot luck for her and we clean out her office. I'm sure she'll shed a few tears as it has been a great year for us, mostly for her. Our friends Jeb and Kaylan are coming up Friday for one last weekend of fun on the Range. We leave Sunday August 23rd for HOME! I'll let Nicole write the "thoughts of this past year", I'll just bring you up to speed on what we have been doing at home while we have been up here.
In February we decided that while we are living up here we should have our basement finished. It avoids us living through the mess full-time, and boy was it a mess. Well anyway, our project was completed yesterday, we just have a few touches to finish up, nothing too major.



When Ashley came back from Australia and was going to live with us we partially finished 2 bedrooms and our bathroom down there, so there wasn't much left to do in that area, just trim and a closet door in one of the bedrooms. The major work was done in the living room. That area was plumbed with the build of the house to have a bar and a living room and a recreation area. We also chose to put a wine cellar in where otherwise another closet for storage would have been. I will post some pictures that Nicole took yesterday. We hope to have more people over now that our basement is finished and that we are home full-time.





This is our living room. The wall on the right will be filled with pictures!








Another picture of the living room, we used a gray slate on the fireplace





One sectional for furniture. We need an ottoman or coffee table yet!



The Ward Bar!
The Wine Cellar! This is located next to our bathroom, just down the hall from the bar!



The Wine Cellar is temperature controlled with its own seperate unit. It keeps temp and humidity at preferred levels.

The floor in the bar area and down the hallway and into the cellar is a stained concrete. We had many problems with this part of the project and still are not completely satisfied with its color in all spots. We will be doing some adjustments to it in the coming weeks, trying out new stains in certain areas, and if ALL FAILS (which we certainly hope doesn't happen because we like the look) we can tile/carpet over it. I think we'll find a "happy medium", but with concrete you never know what you are going to get. We chose concrete as our top of choice in the basement. It is part of every countertop we have downstairs, except for my desk which is just to the right of the bar. We like the uniqueness of concrete and found that staining concrete was no more expensive than carpeting the floors, and it was no more expensive than granite countertops like we have upstairs.
Overall we are very happy with the turnout of the basement project. We just need some time for Nicole to put her magic touches on it to make it our home. It feels a little cold and empty right now, but soon will be warm like the colors she chose down there.

1 comment:

the ritchie's said...

WOW. Great job Cole & J. The basement looks fabulous. I can't wait to see it in person. Thanks for sharing your pictures. Miss you both.