The video of our “man” basement is finally up.  I’m really excited at the nice comments I’ve received so far and that people are asking for other rooms of the house.  I’m all about showing other rooms as we have remodeled almost every room and some of them more than once in the 22 years we’ve lived here.  When we bought our house it was really outdated and that’s saying a lot for a brick ranch.  How out of date can that be, you’d ask.  Well we’ll start with the fact that the people moved out but left their dog in the house for a few weeks without taking him outside, if you get my drift.  So all of the carpets needed to go. They had converted a porch into a family room but didn’t really care about important things like heat and building codes. I don’t know anything about building codes, but the fact that you could see sunshine through the corner of the wall would be a good indicator that they didn’t really have a clue.  They also just put carpet on the old cement patio pad without any insulation and thought a space heater shoved into the wall was a great heat source.  Needless to say, the room made me absolutely crazy.  It was darkly paneled and had sliding glass doors onto a rotting deck.  The deck was so bad that my friend Mary put her foot through it while standing still.  I was MORTIFIED! The rest of the house is brick except for this room and they used the cheapest materials for the outside of the house surrounding that room.  It didn’t match the existing brick at all.   The thing that is really sad about it is the fact that the people that owned the house before us were professionals that owned a big insurance agency and the house is in a nice neighborhood.  They just slapped things together and called them done.  My goal for the house was to make it accessible for me as I age.  So every project we did, we tried to keep that in the back of our minds.  First project, remodel the master bathroom.  Huge undertaking but results are terrific.  It still looks current even though it’s been at least fifteen years since we did the project.  Well we did change the flooring to white ceramic subway tiles recently.  PS I don’t recommend them, the grout lines are too wide and dirt shows up everywhere. Yikes!  The next major project was the small bathroom off of our bedroom.  It’s now got a cool enclosed ceramic shower stall and heated ceramic floor.  I don’t recommend the heated floors because they get HOT!  Maybe we just can’t adjust it properly, but we don’t use the heat at all.  Ok, so we changed the countertops and floors in the kitchen twice before the big remodel…I will skip the basement and go right to the kitchen and the dark creepy room that went onto the deck.  I envisioned level floors where I didn’t have to step down to get to the creepy room.  I wanted it to be light and airy and I wanted as many windows as possible.  I also hate wooden decks because of the maintenance, so wanted a huge cement patio with an awning over it.  The kitchen and dining rooms were both kind of small so I had them eliminate the wall between them.  If you can believe it, the contractor that did the basement came back and did two more major projects for us.  He’s a glutton for punishment.   I wanted a very contemporary kitchen, something the kitchen man had never seen.  I showed him photos of everything from door and drawer handles to cupboards to islands.  It took them FIVE MONTHS to do the kitchen and creepy rooms but in the end, I absolutely love both of them and I hope you will too.  The kitchen is mostly drawers and I have a couple of cupboards that open and up pops my mixer in one cupboard and my food processor in the other.  Both rooms are completely handicap accessible and we’ll have no problem growing old here.  We built another office in the basement that is now Rich’s and was mine, so is cool and travel themed to match the rest of the basement, and the little bathroom down there is really cute as well.  I absolutely love remodeling and making a house my own.  It’s my first love when it comes to art and the area I feel most comfortable in.  I hope you’ll check out my other videos as they unfold, but for now, please enjoy the man room.  It’s not for the man who crushes a beer can on his head, but a man who enjoys lounging with popcorn, a Mountain Dew and his favorite sports or movies.  In short, my kind of man.

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