Home Gym Addition

 In a couple of weeks I'll hit my year mark of being exclusively work-from-home. I absolutely see how lucky I am to be able to have that ability while so many others have struggled to keep employment and been so impacted. One of the bigger adjustments for me has just been trying to keep some level of physical activity now that my commute is literally 20 feet to the home office. At the beginning of last summer it felt like I needed a project. 

We had this outdoor storage space on the other side of our basement wall. It's under part of our dining room and the mudroom so it was already protected from the elements. It looked to me like a perfect place to close in and add a few square feet to our basement, and especially with the pandemic raging, I had a perfect space to build a home gym. 

Before and after. These photos were both taken in January almost exactly a year apart. This may have been my most fun project. It was kind of a culmination of all these years of improvements. I had to plan the space, pour concrete, put in new load-bearing support posts, put in a new exterior door, in addition to all the standard electrical, lighting, drywall, and finishing work. We also fancied it up using legit rubber gym flooring, the mirrored wall, a bench/locker, and the extra trim/moldings. 

 

It turned out great, and we're putting it to good use. Beau brings his buddies over to lift and I can get some better exercise than the 100 or so steps per day I was taking at the beginning of the pandemic. 

I wouldn't have guessed it beforehand, but it's been the girls who use this room the most. They love spending time in here with the TRX band "swing".

Out in the Wild

Considering that we live in the middle of a city, the stream behind the house brings in more wildlife than I ever would have guessed. Each of these photos were snapped from inside.

Birds, squirrels, and deer are by far the most common to see. We often sit at the dining room table and can see multiple deer hanging around. The other day two bucks were wrestling with their antlers while we ate lunch.

Sometimes we see rarer creatures around. We have a Great Horned Owl that occasionally visits and a hawk that nested in a tree outside the window last year. Last summer we had hummingbird who made her nest and had two babies right outside Cash & Pierce's room window. They were so close we could've touched them (those are their little beaks sticking out).

Then there was this coyote. I've only ever seen him once and I couldn't get a good shot through the trees, but it was pretty cool to see a new visitor pass through.

On a side note we have a neighbor who doesn't love the wildlife. I went out to my car one morning to drive to work and he's standing in the driveway with a pellet gun. "I'm tired of these deer eating our tulips!"

Breezeway to Mudroom

When we bought the house there was a little breezeway between the garage and the kitchen. It had windows but was a bit of a weird space. We had plans from the beginning to turn the windows into doors and turn the space into a mudroom.

With so many little people around here we're overflowing with shoes, backpacks, jackets, hats, and gloves. It all has a home now.

I had to take some pics because this space will never look like this again!

Kitchen is Finally Done!

The last project keeping us down in the basement was the kitchen, and we've finally wrapped it up.

Everything in here has its own story behind it from having to figure out how to install drawer slides and lazy-susans, to how to cut and polish marble for the little glasses shelf,  to how to cut stainless steel

for the hood blower.

That one in particular was a mini adventure. After I'd tried everything I could think of over one weekend and given up, thinking instead I'd find a welder, I was at work on Monday morning and Marta called to tell me that she had it all cut out.

She'd used a metal blade on the angle grinder to cut it out. So imagine prego Marta outside, sparks flying everywhere, cutting a big hole in the back of our hood. Don't mess with her, that's how she rolls.

Santa will finally have an easier time finding our stockings.

Ready for Counter Tops

Everything is set

In October, we had a kitchen cabinet guy all lined up. We drew out plans and talked with him about the different options. We choose materials and discussed a lot of the small things that we'd do to finish the kitchen. He told us he would provide the CAD drawings so we could get counter tops ordered and then he'd be ready to install the week of Thanksgiving.

Whole new appreciation for guys who do this

First boxes built

As Thanksgiving approached we reached out to see how things were progressing. We still hadn't received the drawings nor heard from anyone. No answer. Try again, still no answer or call back. Come to find out our cabinet guy was out of state working on a job in Seattle with no end date.

Marta had done a ton of research into options so it was time for option 2. She found a company out of Kentucky called Cabinotch that custom buids cabinet boxes for you and ships them right to your door. It meant more work for us, and a ton more research time for Marta learning about drawers, slides, and doors, but when did that ever deter us?

Unboxed

We took our face frames to the best finisher around at Judkins Custom Finishing who also happens to ber my brother in-law.

In the end, it has been a lot of work, but we saved a ton of money and are ending up with the nicest cabinets we could have. Dove-tailed drawers, custom lazy-susans, all birch insides, soft close doors - there's no kidding around in this kitchen.