The Longest Reveal Ever

Yesterday someone mentioned that this has to be the longest reveal for a basement renovation ever. No kidding! There's nothing we'd love more than to show you our big reveal. But this is what you'd see:
Our new guest bedroom with a toilet by the door and two doors next to the bed. Huh? Toilet in the bedroom? Shouldn't it be here:
Or maybe we could show you the hallway we can barely squeeze through because this is sitting in the middle of it:
Yes, Feeney shredded those paper towels the vanity is sitting on. The three in the photo were the only ones that weren't in tiny shreds when I woke up the other day. S accidentally locked him out of our room when he left for work so Feeney thought we abandoned him. Separation anxiety not resolved.
The problem is that somehow there was an issue with the floor tile and apparently someone sealed it before cleaning the grout off the tile, which was all over the tiles. In short, after everything was installed and "finished" the floor looked horrible and we were absolutely horrified that the gorgeous tile we bought looked worse than the 70 year old tile upstairs. We don't know how the mistake happened, it was probably just a communication problem between the workers. We weren't even going to mention it here because everything went so well with our renovation that this was really out of the ordinary; we just don't think it accurately reflects our contractors because they were so meticulous otherwise. But fixing the tile is taking forever and we really want to tell you why we have nothing to show!

After several failed attempts to strip the sealer and remove the dried-on grout, yesterday a tile expert came in and started to sand the floor to give it a honed finish (we chose honed over polished). First the contractor had to come in and remove all the floor trim, the closet doors, the toilet and the vanity. It looks like a mess everywhere down there, but thankfully the tile is looking much better.
Now the newly honed finish needs to be sealed and everything needs to be put back in place. But now we've got scheduling conflicts that might mean that it will be months before we're back in order downstairs. We have high hopes that everything will be finished this week, but are setting ourselves up with the expectation that it will be September. Making this truly the longest basement renovation reveal ever.

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