I looked back to see that though I did a post for Adam in 2012, I did not in 2013.  Sorry little brother!  Wishing you a great birthday!  I love you, despite your annoying habit of buying everything you want and having absolutely no ideas for birthday presents, and despite the fact that every time you give ME a present, it is sealed with hot glue and impossible to open without using my teeth like a savage.

Here are some Instagram pictures from the past year of him (as I still have yet to recover my hard drive!)

Plus some older ones...

Many people lately have commented "Wow!  Do you guys ever just relax?"  I know it seems like we never rest and are constantly doing projects, but really, the last time we did anything major was December 2012, when we did the upstairs stair guard and stairs.  Matt travelled a lot this past year and I'm not versed well enough in tools to do a reno on my own.  Plus we love doing projects together.  This was the first Christmas where we didn't have any new home project to "show off" to our family which got us itching to do some projects in the new year.

So, we just finished the stairs on Family Day last Monday, and we decided yesterday (Saturday) to start on the storage, was the second half of the basement project.  The first thing we had to do was unpack all the cupboards.  We also went through everything and threw out stuff we didn't need, moved a few things to new locations, and found temporary spots for everything else.

Our second step to this project was to actually remove the cupboards from the wall and take them apart.  This actually only took just over an hour.  As long as you have a power drill it makes life easier.  By hand would be very annoying, but still possible.  We had three big shelving cupboards and one closet system.  Who knows what the walls would be like behind them!  I was hoping for the original exposed brick!!!

The next step will decide how exactly we want to organize the new system.  Roughly we will have cupboards on the bottom half, similar to the sideboard in the dining room.  The top half will be open shelving.  The triangle under the stairs will be all shelves.  It will all probably be painted white, and we'll use Ikea doors on the bottom half, but build the cupboards ourselves.  We want to make sure we will have a long closet on the end for all our extra coats and shoes (as we don't have a main floor closet), and we also have to be able to store our suitcases, golf clubs, snowboard, Matt's guitar, all our Christmas and holiday decorations, and all the random house stuff you've seen spread around my basement!!!

Matt and I don't really do a lot usually for Valentine's Day.  We don't do cards or gifts.  In the past we've gone to Leaf games, but mostly we just cook a good meal and enjoy each other's company.  That's exactly what we did this year.  I did a bit of prep work this time - I made a chocolate terrine  for dessert (since I failed on New Years) on Thursday evening - it has to set 12-24 hours.  I also made one for my work wife, Marta! Other than that, I just set the table when I got home on Friday, made a little garland (honestly took me 10 minutes) and Matt cooked dinner (pomegranate balsamic glazed sirloin steak with kale and tricolour quinoa).

So the ??? was actually until about Day 21.  But really there were some drying time days in there too, but so far I've really only included days where we (who am I kidding, Matt) did work.  Not all of them were full days, but again, with painting and staining, patience is key.  Also balance and flexibility so you can take stairs two at a time holding a giant basket of laundry without falling down.

Okay so I could go through all the painting and staining progress pictures FIRST, but we all know you just want to see the final product, so here's one for you before I launch into the details:

See Day 1-2 HERE, Day 3-5 HERE, and day 6-9 HERE.

Day 13/14 - We had to attach the stairs over two days because we wanted the glue (construction adhesive) to be completely dry before stepping on them.  It was weird to step on them because with and without the stairs they were different levels - it really throws you off when walking down them!

Day 15-21.  Since laundry and storage were in the basement, we had to do every other stair like we did upstairs when painting and staining.  The stairs started with pre-stain to help the stain soak in, then we did 2 coats on stain using Minwax "Golden Pecan" and followed by 3 coats of glossy Minwax oil-modified (more water-based) polyurethane.  There were some days where Matt did a coat in the morning and a coat at night, so it took 3 days for each half set of stairs, plus 24 hours to dry between.  After the 24 hours we pulled off the tape and did some touch-ups on the paint.

See Day 1-2 HERE, Day 3-5 HERE, and day 6-9 HERE.

Project Done.  So Next Up?
- take everything out of storage cupboards (actually did this this morning!)
- tear down the cupboards (may do that later today or tomorrow - excited!!!)
- paint (may possibly need to prime) the brick wall behind the stairs
- plan the storage cupboards and open shelving system
- build the storage system (and a million more details go into this)