We Are Flushed with Excitement

This is Laura exulting in the fact that there's now a working toilet in our basement. That's the bathroom-in-progress behind her. As soon as the kids saw that potty, they both wanted to use it. Something about the novelty of peeing in a room in your house you could never pee in before? I will admit that I felt it too, the desire to give the toilet its maiden flush.

It is exciting though, just the idea of having more usable space in the house. The basement guys were down there all week, working on a couple of rooms for Matt and the four (!) other guys who are now in my guest room. (They hired another guy last week and things officially went from crowded to some kind of reality-show dare.) The basement space is going to be very basic--no granite wet bar--but it will give us all some much-needed wiggle room. Like I will get to wiggle back into what used to be my office.

In a spasm of frugality, Matt told the basement guys that we would do the floor and the painting ourselves. Because we are so, so handy. No, we are not. But we are game. And I have always liked the look of a concrete floor that has been stained and buffed, so we decided that's what we'd do. I researched it this morning. Most DIY websites make it seem super-duper complicated, like, compose your mind, then put on rubber waders and etch/clean the floor with acid, and then neutralize the acid with baking soda, and then pour out libations to the gods, then clean up the libations with a shop-vac, and so on.

Then I read a bunch of old Apartment Therapy posts and people were like, "Oh yeah, just throw some stain on that shit! Put a bird on it!" So I thought that if the actual task were somewhere in between those two scenarios, we could handle it.

We loaded up the whole family and went to the big box home improvement store. Matt and I talked to a fairly knowledgeable dude in the paint department, and he made it seem pretty simple. He told us that with an untreated slab, like we have in the basement, there is no need to etch it or clean it with acid, it is rough enough. We can just clean it, clean it again, apply the stain with a sprayer, and then decide if we want to put a glossy sealer on it (I do). So we left there with the tools we need to do the job, we think. I'm sure you will hear more about this.

The basement guys should be finished in the middle of the week. I will not miss the pounding. Oh my God, the pounding. When I returned from the mountains late last Sunday night, Matt warned me that they would be starting work at 7:30 the next morning. I thought, "It will be in the basement, I sleep on the second floor, how loud could it be?" Oh ha. Ha ha. It turns out that when someone is doing framing work at the bottom of your house, they are banging on the bones of your whole house. It is loud, best believe.

So, to recap: if you come to my house, we can offer you an additional place to potty. And Matt and I are going to stain the floor. I know it will be really good for our relationship, because they always say that trying new things keeps your marriage fresh. Onward.