OK, let's see how my first blog attempt goes. I thought I would add a few photos to go along with what Erin wrote in the previous post. I have some before and after shots of the framing work. Let's start in what will be the toy room/storage area. Here are the before and after shots:

Now we move into the main room of the basement. This is the big room that you entered into when you went through the door at the bottom of the basement stairs. My neighbor Chris is starting the first wall of the project....the back bedroom wall. In the photos you can see the north side of the basement (front of house) where Chris is working and the south side of the basement (back of house) where Erin and Meghan are heading back upstairs. So here is before:

And after Day1 of framing: The picture on the top is the new bathroom for the basement. The 3 pipes you see in the foreground were the position of the rough in bath.....more on that later. The picture on the bottom is where Erin and Meghan were exiting

So now on to those three pipes. The small one in back is for the shower drain, the middle one is for the toilet, and the tall one in front is for the sink with a vent to the roof. The small room framed just behind those is the new bathroom. It seemed like a better location than RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BIGGEST FREAKING ROOM IN THE WHOLE BASEMENT. Seriously, who designs that and thinks it is a good idea. The shower drain was too close to the toilet drain anyway.... unless you prefer to keep your left foot in the shower when you sit on the toilet. It had to be moved some anyway, so we covered the difference between the one hour of work for the small move and the 5 hours of work I proposed. It is amazing what a guy with a jackhammer and a skilled plumber can get done in 5 hours. Let's start with the jackhammering of the floor and digging out the rock:

I worked for about 2.5 hours on Friday night and Sat. carrying all of that basement slab and displaced rock out of the basement to the dumpster. It was 12 5 gallon buckets (4 wheelbarrows) of rock to carry up the stairs.

Here is the new bathroom with the plumbing in place:
The 3 blocks behind the pole show the old location.


And now the grand finale. Yes I shot a nail though my finger. The boards I was nailing had knots. The top board had a visible knot that I avoided, but the stud had a hidden knot that bent the nail 90* out into my L index finger. It went in the thumb side and out on the middle finger side. I didn't know until 2 hours later that it actually hit my middle finger and just started to go in it. I thought the blood on my middle finger was from where it was touching the index finger. Remarkably, it did not really hurt. I felt it of course, but thought maybe the wood splintered. The tetanus shot I got on Monday hurts more than the finger. Who would have guessed that? No tendon, bone, nerve, or vascular damage. So without further ado, here are the photos of my finger with a nice little hole through it.



I have to go take one of my two antibiotics I am on now to keep my finger from falling off. Not bad for my first post. Now I know to add all the photos first, then type where you want the words. Our love to everyone.

-Kevin