Procrastinet

The Basement Chronicles - Part VII

filed under: Demolishments and Renewvations

(Click here for Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, or VII)

Having waxed philosophical yesterday about the illusory nature of houses based on my experiences with demolition, today it's time for construction to take a turn. To wit: BOY this stuff is fun.

Over the weekend, I yanked out the walls that made a corner of our basement into a random, useless alcove between two closets, in preparation for combining them into one BIG closet:

Click "continue reading" to see how it turned out...

Last night I did my first metal stud work (and yes I do hope that's not prison lingo) to wall off the alcove and put in double slatted closet doors:

And now, for the first time, we get to live like civilized people with our bikes PUT AWAY somewhere, instead of junking up our living room and falling on us and the cats (and now that he's crawling, the baby) at regular intervals:

To our astonishment, walling up 15 square feet of the basement actually makes the rest feel *bigger* - somehow, that strange little alcove sapped energy from the space with its total purposelessness, and now the whole room feels more squared off, butch and forceful. I have no idea if this picture will in any way illustrate that, but I took it so I'm posting it anyway:

We're in the home stretch, with two days until guests and three days until the Big Honkin' Birthday Party, with rain in the forecast - so for now it's all about cleaning, carpeting and babyproofing. In spite of my mother's continued predilection for posting Doubting Thomas comments on each Basement Chronicle, I'm actually feeling pretty chirpy about it.

Posted by rjt at June 23, 2004 11:08 AM