When we moved in the basement was partially completed. The drywall is up, but the ceiling is mostly unfinished and the floor is bare concrete. Last week we finally started the process of finishing the basement to make it a more usable space by installing new flooring. For much of the past week I've been working on getting the room ready and installing the flooring.

The first couple of rows were rough. There were a couple of jut outs along the wall to work around. Frustratingly we found that these weren't square angles. I had to cut and recut boards a few times to get them to fit. Thankfully my dad helped out for a majority of the installation. Once we got around those obstacles the floor went down easily! Especially for the middle rows we were able to get into a rhythm and make quick progress. Without his help I've still be working on getting the floor installed.

By the end my fingers were raw from handling the boards with a couple fingers nursing bruises from some errors in judgement with the hammer. I'm grateful I took the week off because I needed a couple days to recover my strength. I'm less than happy about that particular development, but that's for another time.

We're still trying to decide what exactly we want to do with the room. Part of the room will be the home gym. Part will be a play area for the girls where we can let them make a mess and not have to be living among it throughout the day. We also want to allow guests to have a comfortable place to sleep. So we're trying to design around those different needs and starting to look for furniture to fill the space.

While I'm happy this stage is done, there is much still to do. The trim and baseboards need to be installed. C wants to repaint the room. There's another room that needs flooring installed. Although the room is smaller it has a lot my angles to workaround. A lot of work to do, but I enjoy to have this side project to escape to when I have the time!