First bit of exciting news: It's officially been 6 months since day 1 of renovations! It all seems very surreal considering we were down to studs at one point.

Last week the blog took a little hiatus as I scheduled a few nights off to catch up with friends. Priorities. Not to mention, there would have been some pretty lame updates like "another coat dry!" for the eighteenth time. If you've ever attempted to paint knotty pine (especially white) you can relate to the absolute madness it can cause. Even after three coats of Kilz, I just couldn't get a layer of paint on without it being sucked into the wood like a sponge. I think I stopped counting after the 6th coat and one teary meltdown.

I also decided to paint the ceiling white. A lot of people do black (which also looks nice), but since this room flows right from our main area upstairs - the goal was to make it feel like part of the house and less of a basement. We also don't have any wires to hide over here, so it's pretty clean to start with. I thought of doing something different like a cool grey or something, but ultimately landed with white. Womp womp.

It was also my first experience with a paint sprayer. I scored a great deal on one during the holiday season knowing we would need it to do the exterior in the spring. This also made the ceiling portion go faster, but it made a HUGE....I mean HUGE mess. Think of thin coat of dust over literally everything in your home....except that it's paint. Although it did make the actual job faster, I don't think we will be ever using it inside again due to the clean-up.

So, if you think back to a few weeks ago...the basement looked a little something like this:

And here is with our first wall of paint and some of the ceiling...this took about 4 nights:

The goal of this room was to get it "finished" on the cheap until we decide what flooring works best for us. In the process of picking up paint, I actually found one at Lowes this weekend that we LOVE, but after adding it up – we decided to stick with the $25 gallon of floor paint until we save up our pennies. Ultimately, we have too many other projects that take priority right now, so this does the job. You will see below that we painted right over the floor tile after filling the gaps with Bondo. Overall it worked and will get us by for the year while being able to enjoy it!

The basement is Franks access to the backyard, so timing was everything. I made sure he went out for the last time of the night and then did three coats before bed:

Funny story: So the bondo I used the day before had me quite "loopy". I could barely sleep because I knew once the floors were dry – we could move our furniture in. I woke up Sunday morning to see the results and was so excited that I woke Brandon up to ask him to help me move the sofa. (7AM on Sunday, mind you.) He responds "Are you still high?!" I couldn't really come up with a clear answer...but I did get him to help me :)

Furniture and decor in progress! I still have a ways to go, but have added my visual to-do list. I haven't decided if I'm going to paint the fireplace yet. It's actually really grown on me!

....and here is where we all get to have a good laugh. Behind me (I'm sitting on the stairs) is a not-so-finished space. In my defense, all of our furniture has been stored in our basement and sunroom for the past six months. We played a little game of musical furniture as the furniture above needed to come out of the sunroom so that the stored furniture under the stairs could take it's place. I know my logic probably doesn't make much sense to anyone on this one, but I also haven't shown you a pic of my sunroom/furniture storage unit yet.

So, here is part 2 that you all get to enjoy updates on over the next few weeks. This nook area is going to be a workspace for Brandon and I, so I can't WAIT to get this going. The stairs area also being pulled out and replaced with new (these were temporary during the reno).

FROM THE WEEKEND: BASEMENT PROGRESS