The Dungeon: Day 6

I have been enjoying this project so much, it will be sad to see it come to an end. But the end, when I reveal it to Jason, will be the fun part so I am looking forward to that as well :) It’s official though, Jason will be coming home early. He is coming tomorrow morning as opposed to Friday night so I basically have 2 fewer days to get things done. I would rather have him home than have everything done though, so I am excited to see him tomorrow!

Yesterday was an interesting day. I sort of goofed around a bit too much but I think I really needed it after being cooped up for so long. And, I still got some things done! Some things weren’t so fun and other parts were really exciting.

I started with scraping the window of excess paint. Then I washed the window inside and out. It was funny because I’m thinking some bees have their home right outside the window because I would stoop to clean the window (it’s under the breakfast nook in the kitchen upstairs) and after about 30 seconds some crazy bees would come over and start buzzing around me. So I would get out of dodge in a hurry. Then I would wait for a little bit, they would fly away, and I would duck under and have another 30 second time slot to clean the window. After several shots at this, I finally got the window all spic and span and it looks wonderful. I’m fairly certain we have never cleaned that window before so it desperately needed it. It looks so great I wondered why I didn’t do it a long time ago!

Next up I started to work on the floor. Another thing I’m pretty sure we have never done since we’ve lived here, mop the floor. Hey, it’s the basement! We let things slide down there that we would never let go upstairs in the main living area. Shame on me :) I swept up really good first and then I got on my hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water and a rag and scrubbed the floor.

It didn’t really take that long and I’m glad it’s done. I didn’t want to put my nice, clean rug on a dirty floor!

Next up, I dealt with the tassels on the rug. It was the only part of the rug that I didn’t really like (I’m not a tassel kind of girl usually) and it was also the only part that I couldn’t get clean. I knew that the tassels were just an add on and weren’t really keeping the rug from fraying so I did some Google research to see if it would be okay to cut them off (verdict says yes) and I emailed my Mom my problem to ask her opinion. We were all in agreement that it would be best to just take the whole strip of tassels off.

I don’t have pictures but basically there was just two lines of stitching on the back of the rug keeping the fringe on. I just used my seam ripper to get it started and then the whole thing just pulled off. Super easy and I’m really happy with the result. Here is the pile of gross fringe right after being taken off:

See, I’m not crazy, it needed to go, right? Here is a picture of the edge of the rug, tassel free:

Ahhhh, much better :)

After finishing my rug I took a quick time out and went for a run with some friends and then they came back here and helped me move our loveseat into the dungeon. Previously, it was in one of our upstairs bedrooms and it was the only thing I couldn’t move myself. They also helped me move the desk back into place instead of leaving it the middle of the room. Nice.

After another break of blogging and Starbucks, I also hit a few thrift stores for fun. I am so glad I did. Kind of like finding my steal of a deal rug, I found a cool chair for the desk. I’m so happy with it and it was only $9. It fits with the room perfectly and I don’t have to recover it or anything.

After thrifting I was able to start reassembling the room. This is my favorite part, when you get to see the room start to take shape. Here are some quick pictures…

See the new chair, next to the desk? Isn’t it perfect?! I will have to take a close up shot of it later because it has the most wonderful nailhead trim.

I still need to recover the ottoman and I have the perfect fabric. Hopefully I will get that done today. The blue chair will hopefully be replaced sometime in the future. I really would like to get something a bit more modern. Although the colors work, the pattern is just not doing it for me. And, I still need to change that light fixture!! It’s terrible :)

And lastly, here a better shot of the rug. I still can’t believe how well it works in here. It looks like I matched the paint color to work with the rug when I actually mixed several colors of paint together to get this color and then found the rug. Seriously amazing that it works so well!! I am blessed.

The room is coming together, right? Today I have sewing, sewing, and more sewing. And I also need to hang artwork and put the shelves up. I don’t think I will get everything done but I will work hard to finish as much as possible.

Thanks again for all of your thoughts with the hole in the wall ash thing. I appreciate all of the help you are giving me. I will definitely let you know what I decide to do and show pictures of it when it is done!