In progress

This is one of those projects that feels like it is never going to be finished.

The basement!

The good news is that it is painted.  I couldn't do the little bit at a time method.  It was making me crazy.  For one thing, it was very inefficient to get stuff out and clean it up every day.  For another thing, I just wanted. To. Be. Done.

Saturday Emma and Adam helped me.  Mark was just getting home from scout camp and unpacking and recuperating from that.  Braeden?  We gave him less dangerous jobs like going to get us lunch and mowing the lawn.

That kid and a paintbrush don't mix.

Here's a picture that really shows off how truly ugly that paint was.  (Emma wears an old referee shirt of Adam's to paint.)

Much better...

But then there's a problem, and it's called We Have Too Many Books.

Way too many.  We are trying to go through them and get rid of some and it is a long and slow process.  Also, I want them organized in a way that makes sense.  (Not by color...remember that disaster?)

The other day we were moving furniture back and Mark was maneuvering bookshelves and had a mishap:

This is the wall in the toy room...happily the holes are underneath a Canadian flag Mark has hanging on the wall--see the red shadow on the top of the picture?  Mark was mortified and disconsolate after the accident and Emma assured him that Canada had him covered.

So yeah, getting the basement rearranged has been all sorts of fun.  We may be at it for the rest of our lives...

In the meantime, there's one and only one part of the basement that is perfectly finished: the stairwell.

It's the small victories.