Creative Do-It-Yourself Ideas and Inspiration for Your House and Family. Currently making _______________.
Ahh, it seems like only yesterday we were two youngsters on a mission to renovate our basement bathroom, knocking out walls and digging plumbing. Almost two years ago already. Joe is reliving the good ol’ days, using his experience to help a friend with a similar shower. I guess you know who to call for any shower projects from now on!
We deciding faux barn beams were the way to go for our particular situation. I hope you caught the first post where we catalogued the whole process of making and weathering our beams. In case you missed it, we joined together three boards to look like one solid beam. However, it’s hollow in order to encase the retractable movie screen. After building them, bashing them and staining them, we’re ready to install them. It’s time to get these puppies onto the ceiling!
Back to the basement. There were a few reasons for making ceiling beams. We have a weird, lumpy low ceiling in the basement. Despite having just told you this, we wanted a way to draw attention away from its imperfections, and ceiling beams do just that. They’re also functional – this I will explain in a bit. And lastly, they just plain look good.
Welcome to the step-by-step basement remodel! Beginning with the barn door, I guess? Why not start somewhere random, right in the middle? The barn door was the first thing we wanted to build. For no particular reason. I’m glad we did because it informed some of our other choices, like paint color. For a small space or a movie room like this, it makes a lot of sense to build a barn door for privacy, space efficiency, and to block sound and light. It was actually incredibly easy to build this sliding barn door and took Joe only a few hours, including the torching job below.
Our shower is done! Well, not quite. We still might frost our shower glass, or add decals to it. But for all intents and purposes, it’s done and completely shower-ready! We knew we wanted a portion of the shower wall to be glass, but no more than that. So we framed it all out and planned to tackle the logistics later. And now it’s later…
We knew moving the shower drain would be difficult, but this was one of our biggest challenges. Usually when people move a drain, they only move it a few inches. We needed to move it a few feet. It’s time to crack through some concrete!
Well now that Joe is recovering from his triple wisdom tooth extraction surgery, (Oh you, didn’t hear about that? Yeah he was pretty miserable) he’s ready for a bunch of projects. Those are his words, not mine. Most people would be thrilled at the chance to take three days off work, lay on the couch and watch movies while eating ice cream. Ok, maybe not thrilled. It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Nevertheless, he’s been going crazy not being able to do anything.
Here’s one of his ideas from last weekend: The Puppy Trainer 3000™
Shila is the best puppy ever, but she has a slight problem letting us know when she needs to go outside to do her business. So he thought that if she had some sort of bell system, she could let us know what she needs. She doesn’t really bark, so there’s no vocal cue. The ideas is, she rings the bell and we take her out.
My heart’s in Florida right now, but I’m counting down the hours before I get to see Joe at the airport. Snow is falling, just in time for a true Minnesota homecoming. Nobody in his right mind would be excited to leave sunny Tampa for a few feet of snow. Joe’s an exception. We’re both pretty excited. It’s only been two weeks, but it feels like months.
Does anything make this kid happier than an afternoon of snowboarding? I honestly don’t think so. It was so gorgeous Sunday afternoon (yesterday). We needed to be outside. No photo retouching necessary. So. Much. Sunlight.