The Basement With Its Own Logo

For as long as I've known my husband (for the record, eleven years), he has been collecting stadium seats, and has dreamed of a finished basement designed to showcase his collection.

For the past nine years, we've lived in this 1931 all-brick Dutch Colonial, with a gross, unfinished, leaky basement. We've done all sorts of improvements to this house, including adding on an 800 sq. ft., 2-story addition four years ago. But there never seemed to be the extra money or time to invest in waterproofing the basement and finishing it off to showcase DH's collection.

Last year, we faced a neighborhood buyout from a major retailer, causing us to set all home improvement projects on the back burner. No point in improving something that is going to be torn down. When the economy went south last fall, so did the buyout offer.

At Christmas this past year, DH approached me again about the basement. He had an idea... a plan. If he let go of the need for a completely waterproofed, professionally-finished basement, could we allocate a little money and some time for him to create a space of his own? We set up an initial budget and he went to work.

For the past five months, he has worked weekends and nights, changing the mostly-dry half of our basement from this:

Into this:

The whole thing has taken a lot more time, cost a lot more money, and taken a lot more of his focus than I had originally expected. DH is creative and hyper-focused. He even designed a custom logo for his "Ballpark Basement." I will admit that I have not been fully supportive of this project. I've been jealous of the time and attention it's gotten. I've been frustrated by his lack of focus and "presence" with us. But despite all of my failings, I've also been really proud of DH.

And I am so very happy that we get to celebrate his birthday tonight by hosting an "Opening Day" party for his new Ballpark Basement. He's got an entire season's schedule of activities planned for his new space, beginning with tonight's ballgame on his new scoreboard television.

Go Cards!