Finding the perfect spot to move the party....
At this point, I looked at the household space that is typically reserved for the sweaty, the young, the furry or those of the arthropod genus --- the basement. Now I don’t typically plan for our guests to dine in the basement, but my situation called for desperate measures, and I took the leap.
We happen to have a very large open space in our basement, which the kids use for shooting hockey pucks, racing RC cars, hitting off the tee in the off season, or just engaging in the typical shenanigans that pre-teen and teenaged boys like. This basement area was cool and dry, albeit not particularly festively decorated, and I decided that it could work for my needs. So, I employed my three sons and several of their friends to Shop Vac the space, tidy it up and make it generally okay for guests. We hung long strips of colored plastic (from plastic table cloth rolls) to section off areas that were off-limits and hid the infrastructure or storage areas of the basement. We hung additional strips of white tablecloth plastic along the hallway that the guests would walk through to get to this basement area. Since the area was located in a “service” portion of our basement, it was imperative to provide some camouflage for the messy storage that exists.
Once we moved the rental banquet tables in, (utilizing the agility and muscle of my niece – a California surfer teen, who handled the 8’ rental tables solo!), and the stacks of chairs (employing the stamina of my sons and their friends to cart the chairs up and down the stairs), and decorated the tables, I was impressed at the transformation.
