The Home Stretch

This post is long overdue but better late than never, right?

Last week Tuesday my uncle Frank came over and painted our basement. He made the offer to help months ago and trust me, this was not an offer I would easily forget. It's not that I hate to paint, I just don't think that I'm very good at it. Plus, it takes me days. Maybe if we had better equipment or if I just had a better attitude it would go faster. I don't know but I'm very grateful for Frank's help last week!

Here are the new colors! Flash photography doesn't really do the colors justice but you get the general idea. The color scheme now should flow nicely with the rest of the house and we already know that it looks awesome with the carpet. And speaking of carpeting...the carpet is going to get a new pad and be re-laid June 5. The carpet cleaners are coming June 6 and on June 7 we are moving everything back in. I can't wait!

This past week we also reinstalled the bookcase. Sort of a funny thing happened with this. Shortly after we had it screwed to the wall and it was clear that it was flush with the wall I made the comment that I had never noticed this slight gap that now appeared on the side. Brian looked at it and then it hit us both at the same time. Originally, the bookcase was installed PRIOR to drywalling. Now the part that was sunk inside the drywall is clearly exposed because the drywall came first this time. Oh well, this is what molding is for, right?

The first time we did the basement (five years ago) we took the doors that lead from the stairwell to the laundry room off and put them on the new closet. This way the doors matched the other closet right next to the new one. To solve our unsightly door opening we just hung a curtain. It was never meant to be a permanent solution but five years later we still had that curtain. Now, we decided to finish this they way it was meant to be. Brian and my dad are going to work on doors sometime in the near future. Due to scheduling, it probably won't get done until after the carpet is fixed but that's okay. Really, the doors are just aesthetics. You can see the difference in wall colors in this picture. the yellow on the right is the old "light" color in the basement. The other wall is the new color and the color on the left of the door is the color of the stairwell. The yellow wall will eventually be painted that color. I just didn't want to paint it knowing that work was going to need to be done and we'd probably just have to paint it again.

Finally, for this post, I'd like to leave you with some pretty pictures of my flowers!

Last year we didn't actually get to see this forcynthia bloom because it was done by the time it got planted. This year we got to enjoy it. I wish I would have taken a picture at it's "prime." This was taken the last week in April.
If I remember correctly, these are some tulips from bulbs that were brought back from the Netherlands. That was probably illegal but they got through Customs!
Our crab apple...all the flowering tress are so pretty right now!
And finally, my newest find: a bottle brush hanging basket! We had to get it, it reminded us of San Diego plus it's just so unusual! This was my little souvenir from Green Bay this weekend.