Its no secret Nikki and I have been working on finishing our basement for along time now, probably for about 1 year now. Today marks the first day that we started moving stuff from upstairs into its permanent home in the basement. This is a great feeling to finally be using the rooms we worked so hard to finish.

We bought a couple of desks at Ikea and spent some time today assembling them. Once they were ready we moved the computers from our makeshift office in the 2nd bedroom upstairs down to the real office in the basement. Its great!. The room is well air conditioned, has numerous electrical outlets, and network connections everywhere we need them. This is in stark contrast to our office upstairs where we both shared a crappy fold out desk, ran off of a single wall outlet and network jack, and were in a room that was always hot.

Thats not all we moved down stairs though. I hung a piece of drywall on the wall to act as my screen. I primed it twice and started applying ...

Our hot tub starting leaking. I took off all 4 body panels trying to find the leak. It turned out that water would spew from one of the motors when running. I found a replacement motor and pump assembly on the internet but I was hesitant to buy it. Was that really all that needed to be replaced? How long is it going to take me do the swap?

At this point I am tired of learning new things (at least for a little while) so I actually considered just calling a service guy to do the work. Thats when my primary traight kicked on, one that can never be supressed as it comes from my most basic brain functions. Thats when I remember I am too cheap to have someone else come do it!

I got the motor off the internet. I had it installed in about 1 hour and the hot tub is good as new. No more leaks, no more scary motor sounds, and plenty of pressure coming out of all the jets. Thank you cheap personality trait. You saved me big moula again.

See the all the photos ...

Nikki and I have been working like mad trying to get the basement of our house finished. Recently we picked up new motivation; get it done before Rockford friends come out for the Virgin Fest rock concert.

For a while now we have been working on the basement to the exclusion of all other tasks, barring basic maintenance like mowing the yard. Well the upstairs bathroom finally got to Nikki. First let me start out with what was not so great about the bathroom:

1. Its small
2. Its laid out in a strange manner, that emphasises its smallness
3. Blue wallpaper (by itself not bad, but its not in our color palet)
4. Mildew, lots of it
5. Loose 70’s medicine cabinet
6. Gold sparkle sink, also very small
7. Crappy vanity
8. No airflow so mirors fog up like crazy and mildew runs rampent

When we first bought the house we had grand plans to completly reorganize the bathroom. The tub would be moved from all on wall as you walk in...

As a kid I remember my parents telling me to go out and rake the yard. At that moment it always seemed like we had 10 acres of oak tree forest. I despided raking leaves, putting mulch down, or any other yard work for that mater.

Yesterday I mowed my yard. While I was out there I decided to trim some overgrown bushes. Before you know it I was on a ladder cutting down low branches on my huge tree (maybe maple? Boy Scouts was a long time ago). Although it was about 90 degrees and I could have easily sunk 4 hours into something else, I didnt mind doing it. This was probably due to the fact that I had a choice. It was more like volunteer work and less like slave labor. This makes me wonder if my parents hated doing yard work on their parents yards.... hmm.

And although I generated 3 wheelbarrow loads full of trimmings and weeds and about 6 bundles of tree branches, there is still plenty more yard work for left over for the next time I get motivated, although that might not b...