Out with the bedrooms. In with the family room! Day 1

WOW!!! The work crew showed up at 8 o'clock sharp this morning. They stayed until 7 o'clock tonight. And there was only a 25 minute period of time that was free of hammering all day long. These guys worked HARD. So far, we are very impressed.
Let me show you where we started.
Come on down stairs from the living room and I'll show you around. ;)

As you can see, the "finished" ended right at the bottom of the stairs. LOL We always meant to do more. But we were busy with... ummm... life.
Just through that door on the right is the "blue bedroom" and through the door straight ahead is the "black bedroom". Around to the left is a hallway area with doors leading to the laundry room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and the garage.
Here's the blue bedroom. This was Crystal's bedroom. But not for long. Just after we built the room her cat killed her bird in this room and she wouldn't sleep in there again. LOL We can laugh about it now. At the time, it was quite tragic and upsetting.

See how we didn't bother finishing the ceilings or inside the closets? Or around the windows? ugh!

Here's the black bedroom. This was Heather's room. It was a cute "garden-y" themed purple and green room with a picket fence headboard at first. Then she took a photography class in high school and had all these incredible prints that we wanted to show off. So we painted the room black and white. Draped black and white checked fabric from the ceiling and installed a system on the diagonal wall where she could hang her prints to display them. It was awesome!

BTW, the diagonal wall was how we divided the space up evenly to make two bedrooms so that both could have a window.

And here's the hallway which was the most unfinished part of the space.

The floor in the hallway was covered with pieces of leftover carpet from one of the bedrooms which we lined up like a jigsaw puzzle and taped to the concrete floor with double sided tape.

So....those were our "temporary" living arrangements down there for, oh, ten years. Oy!

But the crew came in today and, in eleven short (for me) hours, they transformed the space to this!

They say they'll be back at 7:30 tomorrow morning. They say that they'll get the HVAC redirected, the drywall hung, taped and a first coat of mud on. I believe they will too! They are some serious workers. Very polite, respectful, clean and able to communicate clearly (English as their second language) as well. So far, I'm very impressed with this company. I hope the rest of the project goes as quickly.