I came to the conclusion that mudding the entire basement myself was going to be simply too much work to take on. It wasn’t so much the physical labor, but the mental anguish that left me feeling drained after an hour or so of mudding. We had started in the bedroom and sort of learned as we went. After Melissa and I both decided we had had enough, we called a professional.
We ended up hiring someone to plaster the ceiling of the entire basement except for the bedroom, furnace room, and bathroom (which we aren’t working on at all right now). In one day, one guy did more and made it look better than Melissa, me, and my dad could accomplish over the course of a few months. We were extremely pleased with how it turned out, but more importantly, my motivation suddenly went through the roof. I was completely rejuvenated to get back to the task of mudding and finishing the basement.
My parents had come down for a weekend and we worked on finishing up the bedroom. And because I don’t trust my own ability to mud good enough not to notice it once painted, I put my own artistic flair on the walls.
I used a 12 inch mudding knife and used short strokes to make subtle impressions on the wall
My custom texturing turned out a lot better than I had expected. To be honest, other than watching some YouTube videos about it, I was completely shooting from the hip. We were able to prime and paint the room, and it looks pretty good. Melissa did most of the painting, with me filling in here and there.
The colors look great, and the texture came out better than I expected
The picture doesn’t show the texturing very well, but here’s another look that gives a little bit of an idea of how it looks up close:
The texture covers up all of my mistakes, and generally solves all of life's problems.
Every day we get closer to the end goal, which is actually being able to use the basement. My motivation remains high and I working with that end in sight.
