It's so close I can taste it. . .

. . . or wait, maybe that's just sheet rock dust I taste! 

We did the "final" cleaning before carpet tomorrow!  For so long it has been subs coming in to do work and now we are to the point where we need to complete some things (hooking up wall sconces, faucets, ceiling fans, etc.).  One thing we did NOT do ourselves, but are thoroughly enjoying is the sound system.  We have speakers in my sewing room, the living room/kitchen area, our master bedroom & bath, the deck area, garage, family room downstairs and movie room is all set up.  They can all choose their own source for music or sound which can include one of three TV's (can you imagine for March Madness???).  We also have an iPod doc and Sirius radio as some of the sources.  I am looking forward to getting lots of help when it's cleaning time because we can put the system on "party mode" and that turns all the speakers on all the same source!  Oh yeah, forgot to mention there is a speaker in the hallway by Taite & Bray's room (hehe ~ that was my request!)  Here is a picture of the control pad:

 All the painting is done.  We had a few hiccups with colors, but it's all worked out fine now (well, unless you speak to my husband who likes everything to be uniform and we had to change some colors around to match some things and that bothers him (I know, I should have an award for putting up with such craziness!).  Here is the movie room ~ all a dark chocolate brown from the HGTV line at Sherwin Williams though I'm not sure which color it is.  We still need to make (I say make, Chris says buy, but that would be more expensive!) the covers for the cutouts below the screen.  The screen is huge and watching a movie in there will be so much fun!!!!!

 This is our storage under the steps.  I don't know if I shared this with you before, but I laid & cut the vinyl you see all by myself.  :~)  It's really thick, heavy stuff, so it lays down all by itself and doesn't even need to be glued.  This was all in before the flooding scare and just now is getting put back down.  (not that you care, but the plastic side is the back side of the movie room, just so you can get your bearings if you've never been here ~ and I suppose I should tell you that straight ahead is the exercise room and the boxes from the media equipment housed in that room/space).

 My husband would LOVE to point out how dusty the air is in this picture (creepy! cuz I don't like dirt!) and he'll tell you it's because I was using a cheap vacuum to clean up the dust (I'm NOT using my good vacuum for that!) so anyway, this is a picture of the family room all painted.  The cabinets on the right are the bar area.  The boys don't quite "get" that concept since there is no place to sit at the bar. . .

 Here is the bathroom.  I took a few crooked pics so you could see multiple things.  In the tub is the toilet waiting to be re-installed.  It's still out since we have our drains plugged against sewage backup.  Yes, that's a real threat ~ about 6 weeks or so ago, there was a 3-5 inch rain and it actually blew toilets off in the basements of some homes in North Sioux City!  BLEW THEM OFF THE GROUND!

 I love the light fixture in this bathroom :~)

 This is the exercise/utility room.  This is another floor remnant I got from Menards of the heavy/thick vinyl.  Nice stuff and even nicer price!  It was on sale (before the flood, this was all set up nice and I even have curtains bought from a thrift store to hide the "other stuff" (water heater, furnace, etc.).

 The spare bedroom:

 Monster closet space in the spare bedroom.  We'll have so much storage I won't even know what to do with it all!  (NOT!!)  haha

 This is another view of the family room.  The blue wall was NOT planned but was a quick fix for the fact that our granite did NOT match the wall color we have in the whole basement (the bathroom could be repainted with an appropriate color, but we were NOT re-doing the rest of the basement in the same color, which my husband doesn't like).  I happen to love it though, so it will stay!

 This little beauty I picked up at a garage sale for $10 and we used it to clean up the dusty mess on the floor.  Worked pretty good and if it's not usable again, was probably still cheaper than renting something!

 Here is a picture of my sewing room/office/craft room.  It's pretty barren right now, but already Chris wants a chair or something so he can come and visit me when I'm down there and don't come out (hahahah).  I'm voting for a futon in case we need extra sleeping places!  Seriously the room is H-U-G-E!

 This is my new favorite decorating tool ~ hard cover books without the wrapper.  The best part???  There is a thrift store in SC that sells these for $.50/each!  Upstairs I have a red book, yellow book and navy book in a stack just waiting to find their home and they look so nice just waiting!  This book my mom happened to leave for me to read the last time she was here and I didn't look at it until she was gone to realize I'd already read it ~ at least I'm putting it to good use (she probably won't be getting it back!)

 After tomorrow, gone will be the pile of shoes (I picked up my two pairs before I took the picture) at the bottom of the steps to try and keep the mess downstairs.  I CAN'T WAIT!!!!  I'm not a fan of sheet rock/concrete dust and for that reason we are also replacing our carpet on the steps.  I know that sounds so wasteful, but seriously, I don't think I could get that stuff out of the carpet no matter how much we shampooed them after finishing this project!

So, the flood.  We still have a levee near our house and it's still holding back the back-water of the Missouri River.  We visited with the neighbor tonight and he showed Chris how quickly it's going down behind the levee (yippeee!!!).  Unfortunately, that does not work so fast for those who have ground water ~ my in-laws still have about 4 foot of water in their basement (boo hoo!!!!).  The t-shirts that are selling like hot cakes around here say "Flooding SUX" ~ SUX meaning Sioux City and SUX meaning SUCKS!!!!  Thankfully the boys' days have been spent like summer should be spent ~ swimming, playing with friends and eating pizza while sitting in the back of a trailer ~ hehe!  I didn't take a picture, but our neighbors (Joan & Barry) have a little trailer that sits outside and it's a favorite hangout for the kids (currently there are 8 they usually have hanging around and that includes my 2!).  Happy two more weeks of summer!!