Procrastinet

The Basement Chronicles, Part III

filed under: Demolishments and Renewvations

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

Herewith the third installment of Basement Chronicles.

Memorial Day weekend was a limited work weekend due to various parties, but Saturday was a work day. I continued my attempt to single-handedly keep the Quikcrete company solvent, purchasing yet ANOTHER two bags of Quikwall (love! hate!) and the attendant acrylic fortifier. I have now filled an entire contractor-grade trash bag with empty Quikwall sacks and fortifier bottles. And I will be picking fiberglass particles out of my skin for weeks.

Of the two brick walls we discovered in the basement, we're keeping one exposed and covering the other. I decided, for extra damp-proofing, to encase the non-exposed one in a coating of Quikwall. It was nice to apply the concrete with a trowel, as god intended, rather than slathering it on by hand, as the rough stone back wall had required. It came out smooth enough that we may leave off the drywall and just keep that wall textured.

It also makes for the most boring picture I think I've ever taken - a plane of beige, intersected by another plane of beige:

Continued (click below)...

That smooth, boring wall used to look like this (behind the pile):

Yesterday began the renovation of the to-be-exposed brick wall. Everything I've read has said that re-pointing brick is a tedious business. Suffice it to say that I didn't get to the re-pointing yesterday, in eight hours of work. I'm still DE-pointing the brick - taking the grinder to the mortar that's there. I realized quickly that to get any kind of even appearance, I'd have to essentially grind all the lines between bricks back into the wall, even where the mortar was undamaged. That's a lot of grinding.

It's so MUCH grinding, in fact, that my grinder exploded. Seriously. Right there in my hand.

Okay, so it didn't actually explode per se. But it did get very, very hot and begin smoking. A lot. And kept smoking for five minutes, even once I got it outside.

Here's the dead soldier:

I was hoping to catch the wisps of smoke in the picture, but the wind was blowing them away. It smelled so festive.

So today I return to Lowe's and convince them to give me a new grinder. I'm going to upgrade to the heavy-duty.

Here's the wall, about 80% complete:

And here's me, about 120% complete:

And here's the dust that grinding a wall's worth of old mortar creates. It looked like Mount Saint Helen's. Remember, that's BLUE carpet on the floor:

Here's another shot, for a more dramatic, artsy take on the carnage:

So this weekend, hopefully, will begin (and complete?) the re-pointing. After the cleaning. Then comes the sealing. And the coating of the Quikwall with Drylok. Then the drywall. Then the carpeting.

Now the weeping.

Posted by rjt at June 4, 2004 11:23 AM