"Paint da Fence, Sand da Floor"

With all the work we're putting into the basement, I keep hoping that it's going to manifest itself with me becoming a master, Kung-Fu artist! Remember those lines above from Karate Kid? Remember how surprised you were to find that he was, indeed, learning the necessary skills to kick some serious bully butt? Well, my shoulders, back, wrists, knees all should be the ultimate weapons by now. The trim has been completely painted and now awaits minimal clean-up. We have some wood treating to do, doors to paint and rooms to organize, but we're nearly there!

Monday, of course, I assembled the t.v. stand; however Tuesday evening, I put together our new sound system (seen here). I need to get the technical writer for the Sauder furniture and the technical writer for our Sony system together because the Sony guy is an idiot!

At the beginning of the instructions, you're told to connect the wires to the speakers. There are six total: two front speakers, two surround sound speakers, the bass speaker and the center speaker. I intuitively figured that the color coded tape used to enclose the speakers (and by this, I mean the speakers were wrapped in plastic and the plastic was held together by this tape) was the indicator for which wire to use in which speaker. Good thing I figured it out because two pages and many steps later, the writer decided to enlighten the frustrated reader to this ingenious fact. Moron! There were other special moments from the writer, but I won't go into all those.

Hubby later told me that he checked the Internet to see if people who'd purchased the same system had any gripes. Every time I'd say, "What the hell?" He was like, "Yep! The reviewers all said assembly was a joke...but other then that, the system was great." I have to agree. It took about two hours to get everything together with the goofy instructions I had, but I finally got it. We gave it a test run and all I can say is...whoa. Our basement is essentially going to be an in-home movie theater. The new t.v. and system together? They rock!!

I was a little disconcerted when hubby said, "We should have everything done by New Year." New Year? What?! I can't watch White Christmas, Scrooged and A Christmas Story on the kick-ass t.v.? What gives? Then, I said, "You don't think we'll be done by Christmas?" Then he was like, "Well, we could. We'll just have to make sure we do something every night." And that is how it has been. Tonight, we begin clean-up of the paint that magically dripped on the floor. I will also spend time breaking down all the cardboard boxes and getting them out of the house so that we'll have more room to work. Those dang boxes take up too much space! It's going to be a busy next few days but maybe, just maybe, we'll get to enjoy the fruits of our labor and win the Karate championship (so to speak).