Before The D-day It's was in early summer this year when our walkout basement started being developed. After additional mortgage was approved in August, a design plan for converting one big room basement into 2 bedrooms, 1 washroom, and an open kitchen with living room was made, we hired a builder to have want it done except for the floor. One of hubby's friend referred one for the job. They are skilled immigrants (just like us), running a family home renovation business here. Surely, meaning their workmanship cost is lower than local "white" builder. No formalities, friendly, negotiable, flexible for any change in plan. However, we got to tolerate their working time which affect the completion date as they also work for other job at the same time. Well, we got no problem with that as we are not in a hurry, anyway.

Money-money SO it's all about money saving project for our basement. We use the expert for things we can't do, in term of work needing specific skills, heavy lifting stuff, and special tools. Such as framing, wiring, taping, etc. Compared to our home country, workmanship for home renovation here is extremely costly. Well, great thing being here, with do-it yourself project if YOU WANT, you can make your own deck, your own patio, or garden, or develop your own basement or renovate your own washroom or whatever is not difficult. What you need is enough patience to learn and do new thing, ample of time allocated, persistence to complete the work notably related to heavy duty work. Those will save you money.

My hubby has limitation in time as he can got FT job and also his physical condition due to back surgery. We admit and realize, big period. But, then we thought nothing wrong to have experience to do one part of the project completion. SO, let's try installing the flooring for our basement. Why not, while we can attend free class, free support on how to install tile, drywall, laminated floor. THE HOME DEPOT gives us solution, as they also say : YOU CAN DO IT, we can help. We don't need to buy their products to attend the free class. It's up to us.
Several classes he attended to gain practical procedures to install the stuffs and not to mention, also to boost confidence that you can do it. Luckily, it happened, the instructor had to delay one class for an hour and he nicely gave the 10% discount. he delayed one class for 1 hour. Of course, more loony saving to purchase all the things needed such as tiles, laminated wood, safety gears, grouts, tool kits and even table saw for cutting the tiles/laminate wood, he bought. We in fact can rent it from the shop, or we can have them cut at the shop but we decided to buy it and again $$ saving. We will need it anyway for next garage shelving project. We spent a lot of time to survey the stock availability and price of the tiles and laminate. My hubby is "non-negotiable" perfectionist for the sake of similarity to our main house. It's almost for everything, like kitchen cupboard and colour of the appliances.

Finally at The End the Errands Tiles have been installed around mid October. It's only in

entrance and kitchen area. We out carpet for inner stairs connecting to the main floor. We had the carpet installed from local store. Other area is all laminated. He started putting some part of the laminate at the end of October. First we got help from our close friend to start up. Then, his confidence and skills improved in several days. I would say after watching and giving some help when I'm free, it's not a rocket scientist work, it's pretty easy and easy to follow. It's basically more practice you will get better output. We had a break at the first two weeks in November as his brother and family from Bangladesh came over and stayed with us for a week. We got to entertain them.

Finally, until last night, we're glad and satisfied with hard work we've done as all flooring work is done. This weekend the builder is coming to finish up putting the casings to the walls, windows and other final work. We just need to do put the foot path at sideway so that our tenant of this basement unit can get access to their entrance from the back. Ideally we wanna rent it especially for new landed immigrant not sure when. But it can also be for our relatives/friends who wanna take holiday here. Oh by the way, one Indonesian friend who plan to migrate in next summer already ask for that, OMG. No, we're not ready there yet!!