Brooke here:

I’m not sure if the basement has been mentioned yet.  It’s an interesting space… I believe the phrase du jour is that it has “a lot of character.”  The floor is gorgeous, with concrete stamped and painted to resemble massive Spanish tiles.  The rest of the room didn’t really match the floor, though.  When we moved in, the walls were pale yellow and cinderblocky, and as blood red was used as the accent color, the color scheme was rather Crayola.  We’re not sure of the original purpose of the room but there are two wall sconces set off to the side in a completely awkward location, good for nothing but lighting a desk.  Since the basement is about twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the house, we’ve been romanticizing the space as Randall Jarrell’s summer writing nook.

Elizabeth and I cleaned the room, broke down the existing shelves, and started painting. Among the things we discovered were: (1) the entire room was once blood red; (2) marbles, bunches of them; (3) a nest of spiders, also in bunches; and (4) a snakeskin.  There were a couple of gallons of paint left over from the main room (oops) so Elizabeth primed the walls and began painting while I started on the ceilings and the duct work.

Duct work?  Yes, duct work!  Several large shafts cut across the ceiling and, yes, these were also blood red.  As the walls turned green, the room began to take on a festive color scheme:

I moved on to the duct work.  Since the ducts were in use, they were collecting condensation from the AC.  I wandered over to the massive pile of paint cans the previous owners had left in the Labyrinth, wondering if they had abandoned a paint durable enough to use on chilled metal …

My project for the weekend is to finish painting the basement.  Elizabeth is rebuilding the shelves in the Labyrinth and replacing the rotten 2×4 support posts.  Earlier this week, she moved around the Labyrinth, wiggling posts to see which ones were damaged or just didn’t touch the floor, and decided the entire setup was serving as neither shelving nor structural support and had to go.  We bought the lumber to rebuild the supports and shelves yesterday; the new shelves will be built on a 2×12 framework and will likely survive earthquakes, plagues, locusts, and the weight of Brown’s extensive Lego collection.