TA-DA!!!

So I may have gotten some of you overly-excited for my Big Exciting News I told you I would be announcing today. Hahaha. But I guess it's good to keep you all on your toes, right?

Right.

So.

The news may not be quite as exciting to you as it is to me (nothing like a new pregnancy, or new job, or new house), but here it is:

The basement bedroom that we have been working on finishing for something like 3 YEARS (or maybe more) is finally finished!!!! Hallelujah!!

The carpet was installed today and I have been so excited waiting for this day, I just couldn't hold it in.

Here is what it looked like sometime in Aug or Sept of 2008 (I can't read that number there).

And here is where Abigail has been living since Jan of 2008. We put her in the other unfinished bedroom, temporarily we thought, while we worked on finishing her "real" room. This was also supposed to help motivate Zac to get it done quicker, supposedly. She didn't really seem to mind this set-up, though, so it wasn't terribly motivating. haha.

And here are some pics of Zac working on it. I am pretty sure I took some other pics along the way, but it's been soooo long - I think some of them are actually on film before we even got our digital cameras - and I can't find them. So oh well.

And yes, I will have to confess that Zac worked on it all by himself. I did not help. Well, I helped by supervising and taking care of the kids while he did it, which is something. But - I thought about it and came to a realization of why we didn't do more together on this big project. And the realization was this: Zac likes to learn new things by diving in and kind of figuring things out as he goes. I, on the other hand, like to get a book on the subject, read up on it and follow step-by-step directions on the entire process. There are pros and cons to both approaches, I am sure (for instance, let's not forget the time, ah-hem, that Zac killed my rose bush by pruning it at the wrong time of year without bothering to even Google it. hahaha. I do love him anyway). But. Anyway. I think when we first began this whole thing, Zac was getting frustrated with me because I kept pestering him to make sure he was doing things "right" - and I was getting irritated with him for just wanting to "learn by doing." So, I think it worked out best for both of us for me to step out of the room and let him just do his thing. We work together really well on most things, actually - but this particular time wasn't one of them. And, since I was nursing a baby when we first started the whole project, it made much more sense for him to be the one to do it (and nail-gunning into concrete pretty much terrified me).

Anyway, his brother helped him put in the electrical work. And, as you can tell, we hired someone to install the carpet. But other than that, Zac did all of the work all by himself. All. by. himself. And considering this is the very first time he has ever done any work of this kind, I think he did a really great job. It is a not a perfect "professional" job - but it works wonderfully and for the amount of money we saved in the process, I couldn't ask for more. :) It just took for-ev-er!! haha. But oh well.

And here it is today! All done!! Here are the shelves I love:

This is a close-up of the carpet. Pretty isn't it? Well, we think so.

And the green paint didn't turn out exactly how I had expected - it's a little brighter than I had wanted - but I still like it. So, this will be Abigail's room until we finish the bathroom downstairs and then, eventually, it will be the boys' room (since it's the biggest of the bedrooms it makes sense for the boys to be sharing it. And with the 7 yr age difference between the girls, I feel like
it'd be better for them not to have to share , unless absolutely necessary).

So, HIP HIP HOORAY!!!! YAY for us!! (I will probably post more pics once we get her all moved in) :)

(now to move on to the other bedroom, and laundry room, and bathroom, and family room . . . yeaaaaah, right.)