Today was Christmas, so I celebrated by priming the basement. It looked like this. Pretty snazzy, huh?

And because I was feeling really ambitious tonight, I decided to put the first coat of paint up (hey, it’s not like I have to work tomorrow! Just take Anya to the doctor’s office and pick Kenny up at the airport!). While we were at the store, trying to pick out just the right green, we went back and forth on many colors. Asparagus. Carolina Parakeet. Pregnant Gecko. We thought we had one we liked, but when we looked at it under the little light box at Lowe’s, it seemed too dark. We like bright. Happy. Cheerful. So we chose another one in the same family. And it’s bright, alright.

I believe the swatch is called Muppet In A Blender.

Many people go to church on Christmas Eve. Some wrap presents for under the tree. Here at the Loafkeeper mansion, we…sand walls. After all, it’s a day off from work, so better take advantage of it. I put some last bits of mud on the wall this morning before we left for errands, and this evening I sanded everything smooth and even.

There is a lot of dust in the basement. My snot looks like cottage cheese. I could possibly be an extra in a mime musical. My eyes are full of grit. But now everything is ready to be primed and painted!

Well, once the dust is cleaned up. From the basement. And the stairs. And the floor around the top of the stairs. And probably the whole house by tomorrow morning.

We’ve been working on mudding and taping the new walls in the basement. By ‘we’, I mean Cabol’s dad. He’s a lot better at that sort of delicate and patient work than I am. So instead, I worked on spackling old nail holes in the window trim since we’ll be painting them when we do the walls.

Now that Anya has a new room, and we almost have a new room, the kitties said they want a new room. We don’t have many rooms in this house, so we decided to build a new room for the kitties. Since my parents really, really think the kitties need a room of their own, they decided to give us our Christmas, Birthday, Anniversary, St. Patrick’s Day, and Flag Day gifts for the next ten years all at once.

Kitty Room Part I: The Floor

Eventually, we’ll close in the slab part and make the Kitty Room.

We’ve got walls! There is now drywall on the outside part of all the walls except where the door slides in. We need to get shorter screws for that section. The drywall really is the easy part. I am so totally not looking forward to the taping and mudding and putting up of that corner metal stuff. The pictures show just the framing, the first bit of drywall we put up last week before the plague, and the finished section from both outside and inside the bedroom.

This has been a busy week here at Casa Loafkeeper. Today the sheep were sheared. Sadie decided to spend the first hour running around the property (and the neighbor’s) eluding us. She also got the end of her tail nicked during the shearing, but the shearer tied it off so it wouldn’t bleed. We didn’t have anything to cauterize the wound, though, so he came back later with a torch and a piece of metal and did the deed.

In somewhat sadder news, the three ram lambs are no longer with us. Cabol’s dad and I went with them and watched the process, but didn’t really participate. I have to call the butcher on Monday to tell him how we want them cut, and the pelts are in the shed being salted, to eventually be sent to the tanner.

Today Cabol’s dad and I finished framing out the basement. Too bad they are leaving tomorrow, since we didn’t get around to putting drywall up yet.

[Edit by Cabol: See the place in the photo below where the door goes? It’s a pocket door! That’s why the framing looks different than normal and why there is metal up top. That’s the track the door will slide on. Also, see the spot towards the left where there is blue tape on the floor? That’s my imaginary closet. Do you think it’s too small to be worth it? Andy wants to get an armoire instead. I know this would be small, but we could put two layers of hangy parts in since we mostly hang short stuff like shirts.]

Sunday night I saw a posting on craigslist for some laminate flooring. Now, I’m more of a real wood kind of guy, but at $200 for 350+ square feet of it (new in the box), it was hard to resist. It’s enough to do our entire basement, and unlike real wood you can install it below grade because it is moisture resistant. So last night Cabol’s dad and I met a man in a darkened parking lot, and we are now the proud owners of 17.5 really heavy boxes.

We just hope the mice in the workshop don’t eat it before it gets installed.

The door went up to the laundry room today. We had to raise the opening a few inches to accommodate a standard size door, and discovered there was power going over the door frame as well, but it all worked out fine. Buying one of those pre-hung doors sure helps, too. It actually feels like a real doorway now, instead of a glorified closet with big bi-fold doors.

Pictures below.

(Edit by Cabol: The first photo is from last August when Andy was trying to catch the snake in the basement. We forgot to take a before shot, and this was the best we could find. Alas, it does not quite show the full horridness of what was before.)

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We finished putting up the drywall on the outside basement wall today. What is left is:

1) Replace bi-fold laundry doors with real door, and reclaim 12 inches of wall space
2) Install new wall to complete the basement bedroom
3) Install pocket door in new wall
4) Tape, mud and sand new walls (hi Lazuli!)
5) Prime and paint new walls
6) Repaint floor a darker color Install laminate floors we got really, really cheap

Pictures below. Continue reading »

Today Buddy decided he needed a break from his diet of moles, so he brought us one of these:

I thought maybe it was a baby, but it seems there is a species called the ‘least weasel’, which is just a really tiny weasel. The good news is one less rodent! The bad news is it’s a rodent that eats other rodents.