Procrastinet

The Basement Chronicles, Part I

filed under: Demolishments and Renewvations

(Click here for Parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, or VII)

Thus begins the saga of the renovation of our basement. Actually, the saga began about a year and a half ago, about 6 months after we moved in, when we discovered that in a really heavy rain our basement took on water like a sinking ship. During our worst flood, I stayed up all night trying to keep ahead of it and ended up vacuuming up more than 120 gallons of water.

Several months ago, during a semi-bad flood, I took a saw to the drywall to see what the foundation wall beneath looked like and where the water was coming in from.

It turned out that the back wall was old - OLD - masonry, which had been coated with "watertight" cement which had eventually decided that the whole watertight gig was way too stressful and that it would be much more laid back to just let the water come on through. So chunks of it had fallen away to make that possible.

Anyway, the apartment next door had successfully re-treated their walls with waterproofing cement, so I resolved to do the same to ours - which meant taking down 3 of our 4 basement walls. While we were at it, we decided to replace the carpet as well, or lay down tile - we haven't actually decided yet.

CONTINUED... click "continue reading" below ==>

A couple weeks ago, we packed up everything in the basement (well, almost everything - there's still quite a pile):

and with the able assistance of PJ and Justin (go Stellan!) schlepped it all out to store in Sannie's garage.

Last Saturday, I started the actual "renovation." Turns out, the early stages of "renovation" look a whole lot like "demolition," or, more precisely, "complete and utter devastation." While I'm pleased with the amount I got done, the satisfaction that comes from turning your living area into an uninhabitable bomb site is a bittersweet one at best.

On the upside, a bit like pulling up old carpet to find lovely wood floors below, when I took down all the drywall I discovered that 2 of the three problem walls are actually brick, which we'll leave exposed when we're done.

Here are the stages of Saturday's demolition:

The base of the stairs, with the wall gone

The main living room area, "before."

The office area, "before."

After about 45 minutes, the office looked like this:

And after another hour, like this:

After another couple hours:

The office, after the old studs came down (notice the growing debris pile).

The living room.

And that pretty much did it for Saturday. I left the basement all sealed up...

...and complained about my back hurting until Lisa rubbed it to shut me up.

DAY TWO: SUNDAY

Sunday was the depressing part, as what used to be the bathroom and laundry room got destroyed.

The view through what used to be a wall.

And what used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

The final waist-high pile of debris (which eventually has to be dragged up to the street, once I finally remember to order a dumpster):

So. I found out that while there's some exhilaration to be found in going all tasmanian devil on your basement's ass, it's actually kind of depressing to spend two days wrecking your house.

Especially when you look around and think "this place only gets to be habitable again when I fix it myself."

Especially when most of the skills, like re-pointing the egregiously eroded mortar of the brick...

...are skills that I haven't actually acquired yet.

But, I've bought the tools. And I've read some books. So I'm... um... yeah.

I'm hopeful.

Posted by rjt at May 17, 2004 05:19 PM