It is finally raining today in Missoula. We haven’t had much precipitation and as much as I have adored the sunny, too-hot-too-early weather, it just isn’t right. I hope it dumps for at least a month.

The basement remodel is almost finished! My crafty husband did a smashing job. I don’t have the way before pics I wish I had but picture this: grody, crumbling, concrete floor covered in asbestos linoleum, too-low ceilings with spider nests abundant, cheapo, fake wood paneled walls, dark, dark, dark everywhere.

We were really committed to minimizing our impact of throwing away and buying new (although that was very necessary in several cases.) We bought doors and jams from our local home resource center, painted our exposed pipe to look like copper (it was raunchy old blackish pipe), cleaned the puhjesus out of the concrete floor and painted it, left beams exposed and bought old wood to frame around doors.