Guys, don’t I look cool in that photo up there? That was me super, super sick, trying to clean our crazy toy land that we call the basement in order to get things ready in time for spring, and the big home appraisal coming up next week.

I’m feeling slightly better these days even though I still can’t hear very well (you know the old adult double ear infection), but I’m still getting shit done. We’ve got deadlines! You are going to be impressed by all the stuff we’ve tackled over the last week. Here goes…

Look at our hallway upstairs, it looks nice, and pretty and clean. It didn’t used to look like this. I wish I had a before, but I was over it and not in the mood for taking pics. In one day I installed a new light fixture (again with the knob and tube and old gas lines), and painted all the banged up and dirty trim white. Ahh, it looks so nice!

That isn’t my dream light fixture up there, but it works for now. I picked it up over at the Home Depot a few weeks ago for $20 and painted the base of it white, because I wasn’t loving the faux oil rubbed bronze look.

For perspective, this was stuff I had planned on doing to the hallways the first week we moved in, I can’t believe it took me this long! It didn’t take much effort, and I totally regret not doing years ago.

This hallway is lacking art and I would still like to add some to the walls in the coming weeks. I’ve got an Ikea trip planned for this weekend and I’m going to have to pick up some Ribba’s while I’m out. I also need to tackle that one last door knob and strip it back to it’s former glory. Don’t worry, I’ll get to it, eventually.

This is the after of toy land, it’s still not great but everything is put away in it’s place. God bless Expedit shelving! At least it’s organized, right?

Holy cow, is that a storage space you can actually walk into?!?! Yes it is! We got one of these cool bagster things from Waste Management and totally loaded it full of all the crap (we donated a lot too) that we never use or was broken! It cost $30 for the bag and $100 for the pick up, but totally worth it. It felt so good to get all of that junk out of our lives, and this clean and tidy storage space is such a great reward for doing so.

psst look at this photo from 3 years ago, not much has changed
Look at our totally clean 80’s basement hang space!! This is where the kids party, and it’s normally a total sty.

Someday I’m gonna show you guys more photos of this basement. Yes, there is a glass block bar, but there are also two walls covered in 12″ x 12″ mirrored tiles. Classy as eff, you guys.

Take that to do list!