With our five-gallon bucket of paint we've nearly redone all of the walls in the main part of the basement. We really like this light brown color because it goes well with the new tile and is much more appealing than DryLock gray. With the long, holiday weekend upon us we should be able to finish all of the wall and trim painting. Then we can move onto installing the baseboard.
Elsewhere in the basement, another huge job has been darkening each line of grout in the nearly 600 square foot room. We learned the hard way that grout can dry two shades lighter than advertised. The only way to apply this is to take a small toothbrush and this bottle and get down on the floor to stain away. You can see the difference in the photos below.
In more fun news, the last parts of the laundry room are coming together. We've received the stainless steel, commercial-grade utility sink and accompanying faucets. We're considering turning our place into a restaurant or 24-hour diner. There's extra credit if you can guess who will bus the tables.
Upstairs we've made some more progress with decorating, making new curtains for the patio door. They still need some hemming but the tab tops look great and red/white stripes are a perfect match with the light peach walls and white trim.
Finally, we move outside to a big job we're trying to tackle before the cold weather and expected hard winter sets in. We have two goals: to improve the drainage beneath the deck because we know that rainwater (and snow once we get it) pools there and to spruce up a nearly 30-year-old deck. Fortunately the structure of the deck is still in good shape, including the connections to the house, so all we need are the new floor boards and railings. We're going to put cypress on because of its natural rot- and bug-resistance properties. And plus it just looks nice.
