I seem to have a back log of blogs cached in my mind, waiting to be written out and shared. The hard part is sitting down long enough to write about them. Nate is constantly telling me "you should blog about that" and I often agree...but I rarely get it done. It's not that I think our life is all that fascinating, but rather more of an outlet to share our victories, joys, and our concerns. That being said, this blog is about our first successful major home improvement project in our new little house...giving the basement a little facelift.
In August we bought our first home...a cute little 1960s red brick raised-ranch style house that sits on about 1.4 acres, just on the edge of a little community. The upstairs only has five rooms (2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, kitchen, living room), but they are neatly painted with mostly hardwood floors, a pretty open layout, and some good closet space. Oh...and there are 10 drawers in the kitchen...a big improvement from the one kitchen drawer I had at our old duplex! There is nothing big or glamorous about the house, but it feels like the perfect little place for us, and seems to fit our personality. I like looking out the kitchen window at a soybean field, and watching the combines drive by...it makes me feel like I'm part of fall harvest again, even if I'm not the one driving the combine! In addition to our cute little abode, we have a spiffy shop (almost as big as the house), another little old tin-sided shed, a small grain bin, several nice mature trees, and a big back yard (where we can play football). It's a little bit of country that feels like home.
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| Basement BEFORE |
As we work to adapt to our new space, however, we have identified some areas for improvements or updates. The first of these to be tackled was the basement. Half garage, half laundry/utility open space, the basement presents and interesting dilemma...do we try to finish part of it to gain another bedroom or a place for guests to sleep, or do we leave it as storage? There has also been a tiny history of water coming into the basement after heavy rains, although the previous owners did try to eliminate this. With grey poured concrete walls, wooden floor joists for a ceiling, and a collection of 30+ year old machine part shelves and bolt bins, I was hesitant to un-box too many things down there before doing some serious cleaning and spider killing. One day while looking around, I suggested to Nate that we paint the old shelves, in an attempt to liven the space up a bit, and make it feel cleaner. His response? "I think we should go ahead and paint (waterproof-seal) the walls." A good idea, I thought. Patching cracks and using some Dry-Lock paint would help seal out the water, and if we chose a light color it would definitely brighten up the space. Nate was determined, and judged that the best time to do it was now, so off we went.
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| Shelves Removed and Cracks Patched! |
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| Nate Patching Cracks Under Windows |
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| Me Scrubbing the Walls |
The washer, dryer, and freezer had to be unhooked and rolled out to the shop so we could get to all of the walls. We took apart and took down all of the shelves, the work bench and the yucky old shower panel in one corner, planning to KILZ paint them and then put them all back up once the walls were finished. We swept it out multiple times. Nate chiseled out any cracks he saw in the foundation and patched them with hydraulic cement, ground them smooth, then cleaned and etched the walls with a muriatic acid solution. Unconvinced that they were clean enough, we went back over and scrubbed all the walls again.
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| Nate armed with Muriatic Acid |
Then finally, on a nice day, Nate buckled down for a painting marathon. It took him basically an entire day working (sun up to sun down) to get the first coat of Dry-Lock brushed on and stuffed into all the concrete holes. Where was I during this time? Wishing I could be more helpful! With all the nasty chemicals and fumy paints, Nate said I couldn't help, so I was forced to hang out upstairs cleaning, or go push mow part of our gigantic lawn.
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| 1st coat of Dry-Lock half way done! |
With some great help from Craig & Denise Mentzer, and Lissa Manbeck, Nate was able to roll the second coat of Dry-Lock on much faster, and could stand back and survey his neat, creamy-colored basement walls with pride. Then he turned to me and said, "I think we should go ahead and do the floor too."
That may seem silly...painting a concrete floor in a garage-ish space, but the previous owners had left three gallons of floor paint (intended for that purpose), and since we had everything emptied out of the basement, it was better to do it now, then wait and have to move stuff around again later. So there was more sweeping, cleaning, scrubbing, degreasing, filling cracks and sanding, and even a few little plumbing leak discoveries to be patched up in readiness for floor paint. Brett Gartrell even came and helped scrub for a day, which was great! Temperatures started cooling off, so our good-condition times for painting were getting smaller, but Nate managed to get the primer down one weeknight, and finished rolling the top coat a few nights later. The end result? A shiny grey floor to go with our clean, bright walls.
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| All Finished! Looks Great! |
I was VERY glad to get the washer and dryer put back and running again, especially with a four week "mountain" of laundry waiting to be done. The space certainly feels cleaner, brighter, and neater. We are working on getting the shelves painted and put back up, but all in all it has been a good improvement, resulting in some great usable space! Major KUDOS to my sweetie, Nathan, for all of his hard work, long hours, and dedication in tackling such a big project practically singled-handed, and getting it done!
