MEVunderground

Final Walk-Through: Bedroom The 2 main features of this bedroom are the egress window and the washer/dryer closet. We currently don't have a washer/dryer in there yet but plan to add it for future tenets. The washer/dryer closet is along the same wall as the egress window.

Final walk-through: Bathroom This is the largest bathroom in the house. Tricky areas we had to manage were the stairs running through a corner of the shower and the toilet fitting behind the door. Since we needed to increase the shower size to make sure a taller person could shower without hitting his or her head on the stairs, we then had to move the toilet over which put it in danger of running into the door. It all worked out and the door inches by the toilet with ease. Elements of the bathroom: Tile is from The Tile Shop - white subway tile (shower) - moss penny tile (floor) Home Depot: - light fixture - fan - toilet paper holder - towel rod - towel ring - paint color matched to Benjamin Moore "Paper White" Amazon: - Shower door (Kohler) IKEA: - mirror - vanity

Kitchen/ Living Room We took photos from all 4 corners of the room and some close-ups of the windows, counter, and cabinets.

We had our final walk through with our contractor on Friday and Saturday we cleaned! Tenant #1 moves in today! We couldn't be happier with how the basement turned out. We love the layout and the way all of the colors and materials work together. The living room and kitchen make an enormous room that is by far the biggest room in the house. The cabinets from cliq studios in Minneapolis are perfect! In these pictures you can see the: - new deck and stairs to the upstairs kitchen - new front entry and light with new steps leading down to the new finished floor level (approx. one foot below the original slab) - living room and kitchen are painted edgecomb gray, which reads grayer in person than in the pictures - the floors are a maple laminate from Home Depot - there is a coat closet right inside the entry door - the cabinets are stock cabinets from cliq studios, which also provided the kitchen design - the appliances are all whirlpool and they are in a glossy white finish versus the textured finish

Lots of fun updates in the post! We have new stairs!! I love the nook and cabinet for our gas meter. Granite is in (mostly). We found remnants of Kashmir White for our laundry room and went with Giallo Ornamentale Light in the kitchen. Oven arrived and got right in. The cabinet pulls went in and the bathroom vanity is coming together.

The first couple of pictures are of our laundry room and utility sink cabinet. Then we take note of a few missing items in the bathroom--aka thresholds and shower shelf. Finally the kitchen is coming together with the addition of the microwave! More to come

Memorial Day! We are so behind but will catch up soon. Lots to report. Here you can see our kitchen cabinets are in as well as some of the appliances. They also retuned the brick arch to the doorway which we are pretty excited about. Painting is almost complete in these pictures. Will show more soon. Love Mev

Floors! We went with Hampton Bay Farmstead Maple laminate from Home Depot.

Painting started! In the living room, hallway, and our laundry room we have Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Grey*. In the bathroom we will have Benjamin Moore Paper White*. The bedroom will have Benjamin Moore Grey Owl*. The trim will be Chantilly Lace. So excited, *we picked out colors using Benjamin Moore guides but could not afford to pay almost $60/gallon for the paint. So we took the colors to Home Depot who mixed the paint with Behr to match. So far we are very pleased.

This week has been incredibly exciting! We now have rooms, ceilings, lights, etc. It has been a relatively slow process getting the drywall up and prepped for paint, but it really feels like its coming together! The transformation has been remarkable. It's really hard to remember what it was like when it was so dark and the ceilings were so low. Now it feels open, bright and inviting! The plan for this week is to wrap up the drywall prep, prime, paint, and install cabinets and floors. We will see how much of the list gets accomplished, but things should really fly now! We are headed down to the beach (Emerald Isle, NC) on Thursday and Friday and will be excited to see what we come back to! On an unrelated note, the rose bush in our side yard is incredible. Neither of us really care for rose thorns, but the bush is making a strong case to avoid the free Craigslist giveaway!

Sunday was also epic as we continued our shopping adventure. First we were excited to see that while we were away from e house Saturday, the team had started the dry wall!!! The window sills in the living room will be extra deep in order to keep the footer within the wall. It's a decision we don't really remember making and a concern we raised with the architect and GC many times. At this point we've accepted the quirkiness of the extra thick window sills and will use the trim to reflect the light into the room. The sills will also be a good place to put pictures or decorative touches. After taking in our basement we set out to enjoy the great weather before heading up to IKEA. I love and hate IKEA. It's a fun place but it also has a way of sucking up your whole day. Therefore we got up there around 5:30pm so we would have to move quickly before the 7pm closing time. As it always is with IKEA we were rushing around amidst the announcements of the store closing to collect the last few things from their stocking aisles. The trip was a huge success! We bought the bathroom vanity, sink, faucet, mirror, and toothbrush holder! I can't wait to see it all together!

Saturday was epic! We drove out to Springfield, VA to look at stone...as in marbles, granites, quartz, and anything else that comes from the ground. We hadn't really considered stone for our project due to budget constraints but we wanted to educate ourselves on options and pricing. I will say that walking through the aisles of granite kind of felt like walking through an art gallery--the slabs of stone were beautiful! We weren't able to leave with any pricing information (kind of sketchy) but we definitely learned each other's preferences. From there we went to Lowes, Home Depot, The Tile Shop, and Target. It was exhausting. Even though we looked at lighting, fans, appliances, bathroom vanities, medicine cabinets, cabinet knobs, and electrical sockets (yes-you can now get electrical socket covers with USB chargers)-- all we had to show for our day was a toilet and some household essentials from target :-) We may not have bought much but we did shop!

This is the day before insulation installation so we wanted to take pictures of views that we won't have anymore when the walls are filled. In order the views are: 1. The stairs from the main house 2. The room under our front porch 3. Our laundry nook 4. Looking from our laundry area through the apt 5. The apt bedroom 6. View from the bedroom into the kitchen/living room The last two pictures are of our almost-finished bathroom! The tiles are set and just need to be grouted.

Back stairs complete! Hooray taking out the trash just got a million times easier. Brick repair and patchwork is almost complete. The final step is the archway above the basement door as well as a few minor things :-) The most exciting transformation is the bathroom. It's going to be a large, spacious shower and we re definitely getting bathroom envy. None of the main house bathrooms are this big :-)

Progress with the back stairs continues. Our floors arrived. Despite our general contractor telling us we needed to order them soon they will not be installing them for a while. However, we are excited about the floors. They are maple and will hopefully make the place feel like a home. We have 2 new electrical panels! The electricians did a ton of work cleaning up the old wiring in the house. We ran into a few snafus this week with random lights not working in the main house. One night I had to pack my bags for a trip using a flashlight. The only thing not working now is our doorbell. It's on the list of things to do before the project is complete. In addition to cleaning up our wiring we are also getting additional electrical service to the house. I know it's currently wired for this service but I'm not sure they've met with PEPCO yet. Other than that framing continued and we're trying to figure out what to do about our basement stairs. We do not want the walls closed in so we're researching designs that allow the stairwell to be open.

The last week of April was more framing and prep. The front coat closet came together. The team built one of the soffits larger than we wanted, but luckily they were able to skinny it down so that it would dead end into the wall. Unfortunately, it will stick out a little in the hallway to accommodate a gas line we need for the main part of the house. All in all though it was a good solution. Erick also went to work on building the new stairs from our kitchen to the back yard. While we weren't supposed to walk on them, it was great having access to the back yard again. Finally, the team got the egress window ready for completion. They still need to do a little work on properly assembling the pieces, but the opening is nice and large to accommodate the big window.

Came down to a bit of a surprise Saturday morning... Friday the team moved our hot water heater and furnace into the new mechanical room. This involved making a number of new plumbing connections. One of the new connections to the furnace had a slow leak that by Saturday had produced a large puddle on the floor in the mechanical room, our laundry room and the bedroom. Ev and I got the mop out and had all the water up in 30 minutes. Alex, our general contractor, was super responsive, which was great! We sent him a text message at 8:57am alerting him of the situation. He responded immediately that the plumber was on his way. I texted Alex again at 10:03, only an hour and six minutes later, to let him know the plumber had already come out and fixed the problem. Dealing with situations like this are so much easier with a responsive and helpful team!