I think I am ready to go rent the sander from home depot now. I have cleaned up all of the joints and corners in the basement. I think I will go down one more time to try to go over everything again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything big. In another week or so I will plan to take a day off work and then get a good 24 hours in with the sanders. Hope I can sand everything and then touch up all areas and then sand again. Will be in pretty good shape if I can do that. If I can get that much sanding down with the big sander I should only need to touch up a few spots by hand. Then I can get primer on all of the walls and ceiling and at that time it should look totally different. I can then spray the ceiling with the texture and install the cabinets in the bathroom. I do need to decide what I am going to do in the bathroom, cabinets or closet next to the shower. I need to do that before I spray the ceiling in there. Coming along nicely though. After I get to that stage I can get all the furniture moved around and I can get a final coat of paint on the ceiling and the walls. Figure out what I want to put on the floor in the bathroom and then the bathroom will be finished. Need to figure out the carpet we want in the main room and office, then go schedule that for install. I hope by winter time I will be using the basement. Before it gets to cold I hope to have the gas stove installed also. Much to do but I think it can all be done. Just need to pull the money together for the carpet and stove.

The morning before we left on vacation I finished painting the ceiling and the walls for the area at the bottom of the stairs. It actually looks pretty good. There are a few spots that I will need to sand and touch up probably but I know about them because I knew they were there. Others have not even noticed the few spots I want to fix. Feeling good about that stuff. Need to get back down to the basement and finish up the last of the ceiling and edges. Fill in a few more screw holes and will be ready to rent the sander and vac to get the first sanding and touch up done. After that I hope to sand the spots and touch up one more time and then get a coat of primer on to see what the rooms looks like. Then I will texture the ceiling and keep the process going. Hopefully since jenny is on call tomorrow I will be able to get most of the mudding finished up so I can figure out when I want to rent the sanding stuff from homedepot. I have to clean up the utility room so I can fit most of the junk from the other rooms into the utility room so it will be out of my way when I am ready to sand. Plenty of stuff to clean up in the utility room and probably through some more stuff out.

Over the weekend I purchased a few gallons of paint so I could finish up the area at the bottom of the stairs. Purchased one gallon for the walls and one for the ceiling. Well the idiot at home depot did not change the color settings and I got two gallons of paint that were the same color. One in egg shell and one in flat. Well I went to paint the ceiling antique white last night. That is what the flat paint label said. It seemed dark to me but I went ahead and hoped for the best. Well needless to say, it matched the wall perfectly, well short of being flat and not egg shell. So I headed over to home depot to complain and return the gallon. They did not hassle me at all. Will bring in a sample of the flat antique white today and have it matched. I think I found a gallon that is already antique white and I probably will just get that. Man that sure did make a great evening. Thought I would be painting the walls tonight and I would then be finished. Guess I will be painting the ceiling once again tonight.

Well I finally took some time to learn how to spray the ceiling. I had bought the gun a few weeks ago. I ran the air hose to the basement last week. Bought a mud mixer you can run with your drill. Thinned the mud down a bit and then loaded the gun up. Turned the air on and tried it. Took a little bit of testing but think I have a pretty good spray going. Not like the ceiling upstairs but I kind of like this pattern a little better. Just smaller pattern and less knock down. What a mess though. So the area at the bottom of the stairs is ready for the final coat of paint on the walls and the final coat of paint on the ceiling. Then I can put the lights back up and outlets back in and it will be ready for trim and carpet. I was able to finish getting mud on all of the walls in the basement. I finished up all of the long seams on the ceiling also. Now I just have to get the ceiling side of the corner around the room. After that is finished I figure I will do a once over to make sure all high spots are gone and then do a little touch up to get it as close to finished as it can be. I plan to take a day off work, probably a friday. Rent the sander and vac from homedepot and make a day of getting all of the rooms sanded and ready for primer. That will be a long day probably. I hope I can get the first sanding finished pretty quick. Will do a little touch up and then sand another room. Touch up that room and then sand the third room. Hopefully all the areas will have long enough to dry so I can get everything sanded the first time and at least one more time. Then on saturday or sunday of that weekend I can get the ceiling sprayed in all three rooms. That will be a long weekend but it will be nice to get the rooms that far. After that I need to get a coat of primer an everything and then touch up again. At that point I need to figure out the color paint I want on the walls. Paint the walls and ceiling with the final colors and that will be it. I have a few small things to do like trim out the windows and then trim the baseboard and doors out but at this point I will be ready for carpet. I will still need to finish installing all of the cabinets and stuff in the bathroom but I want to get the other areas finished as soon as possible. Here are a few new pictures of the basement.

I finished up on a few more touch up sessions in the hallway at the bottom of the basement. Sunday afternoon I cleaned all the area up and wiped as much dust off the walls and vacuumed everything down once and then let everything settle. Put up a few work lights and took all wall plates and lights down. Mixed up my 5 gallon bucket of primer and put one coat on the walls and ceiling in that hallway. The area looks pretty good. That paint brings out the problem areas. I have two areas I have to work on the corners a bit and a few areas I have to fill some small air pockets (small spots) that show pretty good now that I have a coat of primer on. Plan to start working on cleaning everything up tonight and see what it looks like after a quick coat and sanding. Prime those few areas again and then I have to practice on the ceiling treatment. Hope to get that up and finished by this weekend. After that is up I can paint the ceiling one last time and then put some color on the walls. Planning on painting the hallway walls the same color as the upstairs. After I get that all finished I can put the wall plates back on and the lights back up and that area is finished. Just have to wait to put trim up around the doors and baseboard and then carpet when I get the rest of the rooms finished. It will then be time to finish up the taping and muding in the other areas. I hope that those areas will move a little bit faster since I know what I am doing now. Will get smaller coats of mud up and then rent a big drywall sander one day and try to sand everything all at the same time. Hope to get all 3 rooms finished on one weekend when I sand and get those areas ready for paint. Thing that sander will help out on the walls but the biggest thing will be when I do the ceiling. can just stand on the floor and sand with the big sander. May take a day off work and start sanding early in the morning so I can go over and fill holes and sand again that day and then maybe one more time that night and again in the morning before I have to take the sander back. Only 40 bucks for a 24 hours. Will put much less wear on my sander and shop vac and probably do a much better and fast job anyway.

Went out and purchased a new orbital sander. That thing worked great. I sanded the whole hallway area at the bottom of the stairs yesterday. Man there was a bunch of dust. Will need to touch a few areas up and sand a little more and then I will be ready to prime the walls and ceiling. Then I have to learn how to do the knock down ceiling and spray that on and move on to the main room. I found out you can rent a nice drywall sander for 40 bucks a day at homedepot. I plan to get the main room, bathroom and office all set and ready to sand and then will rent the sander and try to get all rooms finished in that one day.

I finally put in the new firewall also. Seems to be working great. The first day I found a few people poking at ssh so I changed that around. It blocked their ip but would rather people not even know it is there. Astersk is working again and have backuppc working again also. Backing up the server today. Hope it finishes ok.