It Is Finished

I'm sure by the title you thought I was referring to the year, but I am not. Ever since we moved to this house in 1993, we have very s-l-o-w-l-y worked on fixing it up. In 1997 we built the addition which gave us the basement and another bathroom and a bedroom and office downstairs. At that time we finished the bedroom, bathroom, and office,  but did not complete the basement until 2003. We put in a new kitchen in 2006 and there we just kind of stopped. We really didn't intend to do anything upstairs but the one room that was left to do downstairs was the old living room. We pretty much just ignored it and never used it because our family room was now in the basement and so we bypassed the living room and just went to the basement. Besides that, it was pretty cold in the wintertime.

Finally in the fall of 2013 we re-sided part of the house and insulated the outside walls of the living room and put in new windows and a door. We were amazed last winter how much warmer the room was because of it and decided that we would try to finish it in 2014 so we could actually use it. This summer, we had Phil Eby tear out the old chair railing and stud out the walls and drywall and paint them. Then it sat for a few months waiting for new carpet and furniture. The carpet was laid in the second week of December and on December 23 we went to Newswanger Furniture in Quarryville and picked out our new furniture which they delivered on Christmas Eve. I spent the week between Christmas and New Year putting up some wall hangings and adding a table to the room.

Here's the room from another angle.

 

We also put new vinyl flooring down in the hallway.



I've always heard that your home decorations should tell a little bit about you. Well, I've always felt that the only thing my house told people about me was that I was a poor interior designer. However, I decided to add something to this room that does tell a little bit about me. What do you think?

You will have to click on the picture to enlarge it to see what I have written on the board. I absolutely love playing Scrabble and I love words and I love my family so I feel like this is a perfect addition to my room. I have to give credit for the idea to my friend Becky Gochnauer whose daughter Laura made one for her. After seeing it, I knew that I wanted one for myself.

So...the room is finished except for a TV which will probably go above the mantel. (It's kind of sad to use that wonderful space for that, but it seems the best  place to put it.) I am very pleased with it and it really feels good to have completed the entire downstairs finally. Of course since it took us so long, we should go back over some of the rooms and give them new carpet and new paint, but that will be for another time and another year. Who knows, we may even tackle the upstairs sometime!

Happy New Year!