What am I doing? or Introductions

Ok, so I'm actually in the middle of finishing the basement. Well, "middle" isn't quite accurate. I only have one room partially complete.

Let's back up and take a look at the title. What am I doing? I have a small ranch home in Clinton Township, MI. I have three bedrooms. I have three kids. One is a 14 year old girl -Alyssa, the next is a 5 year old girl - Mikayla, and the last is a 4 year old boy - Nathan. My wife and I are in one bedroom, my oldest is in another, and out of necessity, we have Mikayla and Nathan in the last.

So the object here is to get Nathan and Mikayla in separate rooms. They're getting too old to be sleeping in the same room. Sure, we could force Alyssa and Mikayla to live in the same room, but the nine year age difference between them is cavernous, so instead, we are building out the basement so Alyssa can just move down there, freeing up her room for one of the younger ones.

Which brings us back to what we're doing. We are finishing the basement, making a room for Alyssa, a bathroom, a family area, and an office. Currently, we are mostly done with Alyssa's room. We have it all framed out, insulated, and drywall hung. We are currently working on mudding the joints and corners.

One challenge was boxing in the basement windows. Once the drywall was hung, floor to ceiling, it created a hole where the basement windows are. The shape on the left and right of the windows are a strange shape.

I was having a hard time figuring out how to translate the measurements to any meaningful information on a piece of drywall to cut it out. The shape was roughly a rectangle and a triangle (pictures to come). Now, if I knew how to properly use a square to figure angles, I probably would have no problem with it, but I am not a carpenter, nor have I ever been trained on carpentry.

I did not want to piece together a rectangle and triangle from drywall. Not only would it create extra seams to mud, but it would look bad, too. So I had to do it in one piece. Then it dawned on me: make a pattern with a triangle and rectangle cut out of cardboard. Measuring the rectangle was no problem, it was the triangle part that was a challenge for me. So I created a template, traced it on the drywall, and cut it out.

It fit well. I used that piece as a template for the other sides of the window, and after some minor modifications, they look good!

More to come. Take a look at the videos and pictures.