But first, he wanted to buy a new bike, so we can go for a ride together. We have 3 old ones in the basement, I repaired the newer one, and we went for a LONG ride friday afternoon, two and half hours long! I didn't realized that untill we got home. My legs were shaking so badly, and very painful. I was exhausted. I haven't exercised for years, and that was just too much to handle. So, after 2 load of laundry, I collapsed and I slept like a baby that night.
Early Sat morning, we completed the first step of organizing the basement. Remember I cleaned up everything a while ago? At that time, I piled all the stuffs I want to donate in the middle of the basement. I normally drop off all my donations at the end of the year, but this time, we decided to do it now, kind of semi-annual donation. We loaded everything into my car, the trunk and the backseat were full, and we carried two older bikes on the back. I have to admit, having all that clutter removed from the house made me feel much lighter, like someone just removed a huge rock from my shoulder. I used to hold on to everything, but watching so many home organizing and interior design shows changed my mindset. They are right, if I haven't use something for the past several years, I will never use it again. Then why keep it and clutter my house and my mind. Then we moved all the shelves and exercise equipment to the center of the basement, and started waterproof the walls. I bought a smaller can of that stuff and tried around the stairs several months ago, let me tell you, that stuff stinks! So, this time, we closed the door to the first floor, opened the bulkhead, and the small window, and turned on a box fan. We bought a couple of heavy duty masks, and I didn't smell anything. That was great! It's not easy to paint the concrete wall, because it's not smooth, has lots of tiny holes. DH used the roller to cover the big area, I used a brush filled up the holes. The whole process took about 4 to 5 hours, and when it was done, we were covered with tiny white drops. DH's hand was so tired, he couldnot even hold chopsticks. And my arm was so painful, I could not even fall asleep.
Then yesterday, I heard some strange noise in the basement, and noticed the reading on the Radon Gas alarm was much higher. Our basement had Radon problem when we purchased the house, so we had the builder installed the radon reduction system. Everything was fine after that. But we didn't want to risk it, since we exercise and do lots of other things down there, we bought the alarm. The reading has been 1, which means radon level in our basement is less than 1, almost undetectable. But ever since we sealed most of the gaps between the floor and walls before we painted it, the reading went up. So, we bought more of those already mixed cement stuff, and sealed everywhere we can hear air leaking noise. We will let the cement dry and see what happens.
Now that the basement wall are done, we are thinking about painting the floor too. I took a class on how to seal the garage/basement floor at Lowe's 3 years ago, but never got to do it. (Because I had all those junks in the basement) Now is the great time. I had all these design idea for the basement, once it's all done, we will have a exercise area, my crafts area, laundry area, and storage area all nicely separated. Cannot wait! It won't be a finished space, but well organized and that is enough for us at this stage of life.
Oops. No pictures! OK, found some. Here are some pictures of my friend's blooming flowers in her office. Enjoy.
Forgot this one's name. But it sure is beautiful.
Her Phal.
Amazon Lily. We got the bulbs from AK at the same time, mine still has only one leaf. Look at hers! 
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