Sunday fun

Yesterday Joe and I accomplished quite a bit! Joe started the morning off running the annual Trolley Run, a 4 mile race along the old Trolley Trail in the Brookside/Plaza area. I had thought about running it as well, but haven't been as good with my training and knew the 4 miles would be over my head right now. I'm also trying my best to take Molly and Lucy on daily walks/runs, and I thought I'd rather jog 2-3 miles with them, than struggle at the race by myself. So after our respective runs, Joe and I set out sights on taking care of some things around the house that we hadn't finished since the kitchen project.

We started with the garage, which once again became the storage unit and kept both of our cars outside on the driveway. Most of the clutter came from bigger items, and things that just needed to be cleaned up and put away after collecting dust from the kitchen construction. It didn't take too long to get it emptied and cleaned out, (it is only a single car garage, mind you!) so we kept working and turned our attention to the cars. Both needed serious attention, more inside than out. A few hours later, my car was completely clean, and the inside of Joe's was looking much better!

After a quick lunch break, we ran to Lowe's to pick up a few basement subfloor tiles, designed for basements with moisture issues. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the small springs of water that flow from the natural stone walls in our basement during a heavy rain qualify us for "moisture issues!" The neat thing about this subfloor system is that it's pressed plywood attached to a layer of plastic grating, similar to the inside of an egg carton. The plastic part is on the bottom, so if there is moisture, it doesn't damage the wood above. The downside is that the subflooring is rather expensive, so we decided to try a few pieces on the cabinets we saved from the old kitchen that Joe's turning into a new workbench. We're planning on watching to see how well it works, and then may use it down the road if and when we finish the rest of the basement.

When we got home from Lowe's, we avoided any temptation to stop working, and headed straight downstairs. We had piles of dirty laundry that needed to be done, and yet another leftover workspace from the kitchen that was covered in sawdust and drywall dust. A few hours later, the basement was starting to look better, so we kept going. I think one of the things that kept us going was that while it was a warm 80 degrees upstairs, the basement was nice and cool. Not wanting to go hang out in the hot, humid living room above, we decided to arrange the old couches we've been storing in the basement and TV that we were planning on getting rid of into a second living/TV room. Joe even figure out how to re-run the cable lines in the house to add cable to the basement TV! We spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry and watching a movie in our new space.

And the storm that pushed us to work quickly and finish ahead of it's forecast early afternoon arrival? It didn't roll into the area until much later, around 11pm. No hail, no damaging winds, but enough rain to start examining whether those subfloor tiles will be a good product for us or not!