Obviously construction guys need to be in your house during the workday, so for the duration we had to lock up the cats every day before we left for our respective offices. We stashed them in the current computer room (Clark's FUTURE ROOM, woo wooooo wooo) along with food, water and litter pans. We would spring them when we got home, but we still had to keep them out of the basement for the duration. This was mightily confusing to them.
Since they were making use of suddenly-upstairs litter, I was a little worried that they would re-train themselves to piss in Clark's room even after the litter was gone... especially since one of them (damn I wish I knew which one) occasionally misses the litter box and piddles on the floor nearby. If you know cats, you know that sometimes they can focus on one area and claim that as a public urinal just because they happened to accidentally mark it, even if it does not appeal to their post-piss digging instinct.
Here you can see some drywall going up, and how they boxed out the ugly pipe pillars. The general idea is that, one day, some future big-ass TV is going to sit between those pillars. I had the guys run two cable outlets (one for TV, one for computer) and string up speaker wire for surround sound. S-M-R-T!
Luckily, I can report both cats re-adjusted to heading back downstairs perfectly... even though now they have to stalk down a more-enclosed stairway and saunter through a finished basement to get to the shameful, unfinished side that still houses their litter. It was a near thing; the weeks of construction (and shut-up cat door) made them very skittish about going downstairs again. I had to coax them up and down for a few nights to get them re-acclimated.
And now, the revised blueprint:
Again, not to scale. We're ending up with a nice big awesome room, a strip of storage and cat litter by the sump pump, and plenty more storage available in the HVAC wing. The area under the stairs houses all our holiday stuff. The contractors even moved one of the old lights under there, since we have can lights and sconces in the new room (on dimmers!)
No drop ceiling. We went for whatever it's called that isn't a drop ceiling.
More drywall. This is about the time we were starting to dread having to paint this whopper. Especially the non-drop ceiling. We gladly tacked painting on to the end of the construction bill.
During the drywall phase, they put up plastic sheeting up over the empty door frame. Clark thought the plastic curtain door was amazing, and he was sorely disappointed when the actual wooden door showed up.
These were pretty exciting times, because we would get home from work every night and be astonished at the new stuff. "They boxed the window!" "They made the stair trim match the rest of the house!" "There's a doorknob!"
Here's the painting in process. Most of the room is that coffee color. It is a bit lighter now.
This room is not included in the original heating plan, because both the contractor and the original builder doubted our unit should be pushed to heat an additional room of that size. So we opted for electric baseboard heaters that we can keep off when they are not needed.
There are eight can lights in the ceiling, but the contractor noted that they could not get them in the area behind the pillars thanks to the pre-existing heating ductwork. He suggested sconces, and I suggested putting them on the reverse side of the pillar (rather than the wall) for a dramatic look. See, dramatic.
Standing in the unfinished side, you can see the sconces in action.
At some point, we'll probably have to install a kitty door. Until then, we'll have to keep it cracked open for the cats.
Next time: carpet and furniture!
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