Hurry up...

We just found out that Kira may be moving back for a while. The house she is living in belongs to her bestfriend Mandy's Grandmother. Her other roommate's (Mandy's cousin) parents are selling their house because of lost jobs and the decline in the economy, in other words, foreclosure. So, they will be moving into the house that the three girls have been living in for the past year, in just a couple of short months. Good warning, huh?
The cousin will be moving her room to the basement, the parents will be taking over the cousins room and Mandy is more than welcome to continue living there as long as she likes (cuz it 'will be fun') and Kira can live there for as long as she NEEDS to. I don't know if she caught that in the email, but I sure did. Eeww, why would she want to live with someone else's parents? Not cool!
So, it kind of looks like Andy will be leaving and Kira will be coming back at probably the same exact time. Yeow, that's going to be hard.
I certainly do not mind in the least her moving back, because we get along great, but I do worry about her state of mind. She seems to wither when she is home, and it's hard to watch. She is much better away from me, and being independent.
She asked me to look over her cover letter and make changes where I saw fit. Well, I'm not in the habit of looking at cover letters or resumes because I've worked at the same place for nearly 34 years, so I asked Andy to take a look (he does hiring is his position). He made some changes and gave some ideas that we hope will help get her foot in the door.
All she needs is a chance to talk to the person that matters, because she CAN DO the job, without a doubt. She IS an animal person. So, I'm praying that with her new cover letter does the trick and she will be able to get a zoo job and all will be right with the world.
Anyway, to make a short story way too long, we need to buckle down and get the basement done for Ethan. At least we only need to do the one side right now, seeing as the permit is only for Ethan's room. I do want the other side changed though. It needs new carpet and I want actual walls and a ceiling. It's too dark and cold right now. Then he can move down there, Kira will have to do with the tiny room until Andy leaves, then she can have his room.
This is all temporary!! Right?
I like to think of it as having a place for everyone to stay when they come back for a visit. Once Ethan has moved out to a place of his own, we will have a bedroom suite in the basement, and a guest bedroom on the main floor with twin beds (or bunkbeds if my kids have kids) so they'll all be welcome.

Flooring...

I'm thinking of infloor heating for the basement floor. I know that it would be much more expensive than carpeting, but it sure would be nice in the winter. I'll have to price it out.

Windows

The Basement Window Guy came by yesterday with a couple helpers and put one of the egress windows in. I know what egress windows look like, but it was a surprise to see one in my basement. Wow, they sure do let in a lot of light.
Today they came back and did the second window. Now we can walk into that room (during the day at least) and not have to turn on the light. Yey!!
I'm thinking that the wandering, neighborhood cats will be sitting in the window wells, trying to pester our cats. Then our cats will feel the need to mark their territory and leave their scent all over the new walls and carpet, cuz you can bet your bottom dollar that they won't do any marking until it's all done.
Anyway, the windows are lovely!!

Basement...

The winter project (one always needs a project) is to finish off the basement for a couple of bedrooms. Ethan has the smallest bedroom in the house, and as he's going to be around for awhile, he suggested having a room in the basement. We came up with some plans and got the permit last year. Seeing as how we are procrastinators, we're finally getting started. The two egress windows will be installed early November. We've already got some of the studs up, but found out we need a plastic barrier between the outside walls and the studs, so we need to fix that. I got a book from Menard's on concrete staining and I'm going to try out some ideas in the laundy room down there. We'll need two large shelf units, the ones that can hold 2000 lbs each for all the plastic buckets of stuff I can't part with. I want ceiling tiles on the entire basement, because I HATE spiders. David said we'll still have spiders with a ceiling, but at least I won't have to be down there with the vacuum attachment in the air, sucking up webs and bugs. YUK! This way I can just go around the edges and suck up webs and bugs. Andy was going to buy a house with a friend, but I think that's going to be put on hold for awhile, so he's going to have the other side of the basement, the side that will be our entertainment room when they're all gone. I'll have lots of sneaky storage places so there's not a bunch of junk laying around. They'll have to vacuum and dust regularly too, or maybe I'll just do it. I'm such an enabler, (as are most mothers) no wonder men aren't capable of surviving on their own unless they're living in filth. ha ha just kidding...NOT
Anyway, the basement looks really cool in my head, nothing fancy, because that's not who we are, but very livable and nice.