The Big Plan

I have decided yo have some work done in our basement. Presently, it looks like a prison cell for holiday decorations gone bad. The floor is gray concrete, the walls white cinder block with a few narrow shelves and box after box of holiday creations (orange and black for Halloween, red and green for Christmas - yes, there is an order to my chaos) stacked two deep along almost every wall.

There are two small transom windows set up high which offer a lovely view of the side yard with its scorched grass. They have been painted shut for about thirty years and do have bars across them (courtesy of the alarm company). Occasionally, we get those jumping crickets, but fortunately, the spiders that live down there seem to keep that population under control.

Since our last big project was two years ago and the memories have begun to fade (well, not so much fade as been repressed) I decided it was time to tackle the final frontier, the only space in the house that we haven't redone (which is proof that I have waaaay too much time on my hands and need to get a real job!).

I say "I" because Tim is having no part of this. Just the mention of tile, paint, and lighting fixtures is enough to have his eyes glazing over. Talk about placement of a door, and he is headed for the nearest one as though the house were on fire. Whenever I do manage to corner him and ask his opinion on anything, I get the same answer every time: Let's move. It will be less aggravation!!!

And so, left to my own devices, I made a plan, and a darn fine one it was too, if I do say so myself.

Two years ago, one of the guys who was running some wire in the crawlspace behind the shelves happened to mention that there was actually an entire room back there that was filled with dirt and had never been dug out. This got me to thinking (thinking, obsessing, potato, potauto). What if we broke through the wall and put all the junk into this other room? Then, we could finish off the basement and have a really neat rec room with a bar and maybe a pool table (or at least that is what I told Tim. I was actually thinking more along the lines of a chick room, but, hey, all's fair in love and home design).

Naturally, I tried to talk Tim into crawling around back there and scoping it out for me, but he had some silly objection to snakes and undead, so the most I could do was get him to shine a flashlight around through the three foot opening and mutter, "Let's move." Not helpful.

When my father came for a visit, I tried to coax him to take a look-see but, once again, there was a lot of flashlight waving and head shaking, but no actual progress on determining the dimensions of the mystery room. Since he is over seventy, I let him slide on this out of the goodness of my heart.

Finally, I got the guy who had done our bathroom to come out to the house and take a look. At last, here was someone who would brave the world of the unknown! Wrong again. I had a brief moment of hope when he actually stuck his head through the opening, but then the flashlight came out and well...

He did, however, determine that it was big enough to hold all my stuff, and said he could dig out the room and cut through the wall to make a door. At least that is what he told me.

His face and tone of voice told another story. They clearly said, "Lady, you are insane. Do you know how much work it would be to haul all of that dirt out, bucket by bucket and pass it through those windows by hand???? Not to mention cutting through a cinder block wall, pouring a concrete floor, and don't even get me started on the possibility that the foundation doesn't go down further than three feet over there and we'd need to build a retaining wall!!!

Okay, so maybe this wasn't the best way to go. Perhaps it was time to come up with Plan B