Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Episode One: The Basement (Old House)

Many of you may remember the tragic overflow of water from our 3 year old washing machine last May.... the crazy machine that had "nothing wrong with it" (according to the repair men who came to fix it) dumped over 75 gallons of water onto the floor. Fortunately I found the problem at 10:30 pm and we were able to get the water stopped, everything hauled out to the garage, the carpet pulled back and the pad removed before too much damage was done.

The next day a restoration team came and put fans everywhere in our basement-- these blew for a full week before it was pronounced dry, and then they removed the damaged sheet rock. Here are the pictures of the destruction.

We lost the sheet rock about 18 inches up the wall, lost the baseboards, found out we only had styrofoam insulation.... The Culprit. In the box on the left is our new washing machine :) We actually had the repair men fix the flawed washing machine by installing a new part and then sold it to some guy for $150.... sa-weet! There was no way I was ever going to do another load in that thing.

Found out we had a plumbing issue in that black main sewer line, possibly caused by the restoration crew who were not too careful while cutting out the sheetrock.... this required making a hole in the sheetrock behind the medicine cabinet/mirror and in the garage to repair. Also we lost the vanity because it got waterlogged... but the homeowners insurance wanted us to keep the counter top and built in sink and faucet, which we did... but then the sheetrock guy knocked over the counter and broke it and took $ off his bid to make up for that. So, we ended up with a completely new vanity and sink.

Lovely, I know.

It took us 3 months to even get a sheet rock guy to come to our house and give us an estimate (after getting money from our home owners insurance to clean it up and fix it). We told him to go ahead and fix it... and a few days later it was ready for paint.

Due to the fact that we're busy people with three kids and it's difficult to take kids into a construction zone, the painting of the basement took a lot longer than it probably should have.... but thanks to my sister Lisa and my parents who helped out a bunch, we finally finished it and got baseboards installed and painted too. Then we got new carpet (which meant we did remodeling upstairs too.... but that's a different episode).

It was a great day when we moved back into the basement... we almost didn't want to put anything back down there because we thought we might be moving sometime in the future (yep!), but we needed the functional space both in the basement and in the garage that had been completely non-functional all summer long.

Of course I didn't get pictures of the finished basement at that point.... it got too full of business stuff so it didn't look pretty anymore. So, I just finished moving everything out of it and was about to take down the paintings but remembered to grab the camera first, so you can all see the finished product! (Except I forgot to take a picture of the bathroom.... so I'll do that next time I go over to that house).



Stay tuned for more episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to see the remodeling of the kitchen, dining room, living room, and upstairs of the old house.... and remember, this is all just a teaser because we're in the process of making over another house right now!