When the Rubber Meets the Road...

This.is.it.  This is the moment I've been waiting for for my whole life.  My first chance to pick paint colors on a home of my very own.  And now that the opportunity has presented itself, I am choking.  I'm nervous and second guessing myself.  I am starting with the basement so maybe I shouldn't worry so much.

In fact, all the work in our house has been on the basement so far.  First, we took out the wet bar:

This was no small feat since that sucker was wired with electricity, plumbing for the sink and liquid nailed down to the tiles on the floor.  Not to mention two walls of mirrors behind it that had to go.  The space is so much bigger feeling already!

My husband has informed me that we are no longer going to live like "hoarders".  We weren't before - it is just that I had a bunch of furniture and things piled up in the basement which made it impossible to have a normal living space out of it.  Our new basement has to have a nice space for my husband to work (since his new job requires him to work from home), a comfy tv area (for me to send him when he doesn't want to watch HGTV - ha ha), a crafting area for me and storage.  And there's a full bath down there but that's a story for another day. 

First problem is lack of storage.  Second problem is that the heating/air is loud downstairs where my husband has to work.  So...(I have to give my husband credit for this since it was all his idea) we built a wall and doorway to the back to a "utility area" that will house our washing machine and dryer a tool closet (existing but we will likely outfit it with peg board) and the hot water heater. 

On the wall opposite where the wet bar used to be (which is the future home to my crafting area), we built a large closet that will give us plenty of room to hide Christmas decorations, suitcases, boxes, etc.

Here's a look at the work in progress (Bill and Mike are hard at work):

But that ain't all that is going on (and if you heard all the banging and clanging going on right now, you'd believe me).  All of the basement walls are covered by dated dark wood paneling on the bottom and horrible, textured plaster on the top.  Case in point:

It took a little convincing but I finally got my husband's buy in that the textured plaster HAD to go and that the wood paneling had to get painted. So while Bill and Mike work on the wall to the utility room and the closet, Eddie is busy dry walling the entire basement before he paints it. 

And this is where we stand now:

I swear the dry wall is so much better than the plaster, it wouldn't even bother me if we didn't paint it.  :)  Not really but it is a DRASTIC difference already.

So, here I am back at the paint choices.  I have to decide by Friday.  Initially I thought I was going to paint all of the woodwork white and then do a color on the dry wall up top but the painter is trying to convince me to do a color on the woodwork that is darker and then a lighter color up top.  Ahhhh...so many choices!!  I am going to go to Home Depot and get some paint samples and go from there.  I'll keep you posted.