Basement Work

I've been seriously slacking when it comes to writing blog posts! This update covers the last little bit of last year.

Starting in November lasting through December we had contractors come in and do all the work in the basement that we needed done quickly, or that we didn't want to do ourselves. This included putting up the closet framework for our master bedroom closet, the drywall in the master bedroom and the ceiling in the 2nd room, and lastly installing new windows. The windows were quite an ordeal because they had to be special made so they took a REALLY long time to come in, and then the contractors had to cut out the concrete in order to fit the bigger windows in. We still have concrete dust flying around the house- I think partially because we haven't started, or cleaned, the 2nd room downstairs. But what we worked on last year was our bedroom and the laundry room.

Laundry Room
We paid the contractors to put the ceiling up in the laundry room and put folding doors in the laundry room over the HVAC and Water Heater.
What we did was :

• Mud and sand the drywall that was already up
• Install the tile in the laundry room and the landing 
• Paint the laundry room ceiling
• Paint the laundry room walls
• Install the baseboards

What is left 

• Painting the folding doors (started)
• Paint the molding and the trim (started)
• Build a shelf right above the washer and dryer but only 4-6 inches deep - this most likely will not happen until after we get a new washer and dryer
• Install cabinets above the washer and dryer
• Find a new storage unit/trash can for between the washer and dryer

Master Bedroom

We paid the contractors to do a lot more in the master bedroom than we normally would have, mostly because we wanted the room mostly done by Christmas, and we did succeed. We got the contractors to fix the electrical work, install the bigger window, do the drywall and all the mudding. 

What we did : 

• Paint the ceiling and walls
• Install the flooring
• Install the baseboards
• Install the trim

What we still need to do 

• Install the quarter round/shoe
• Touch up the paint on the ceiling and the walls
• Find a painting to cover the breaker box 

The bedroom has the least amount of work that we still have to do to have it completely done.

2nd room Downstairs 

The 2nd room downstairs is pretty much a blank canvas. We paid the contractors to do the ceiling and some of the drywall above the knee wall and put the bigger windows in. 

What we have left (which is a lot) 

• Empty the room & clean it
• Seal the floor, use concrete filler and seal it again
• Install the sound wiring for TV & surround sound
• Drywall
• Taping & mudding
• Painting the ceiling
• Painting the walls 
• Install the floor
• Baseboards & shoe
• Build book cases & recessed DVD shelves

I have found I am more productive if I have a deadline, so I'm telling myself I want to have the 2nd room in the basement done by the end of April so we can move onto focusing on getting the carpet upstairs ripped up and the flooring installed there. Then we will have most of the big projects at the house done!

Basement Landing- Rip up that Carpet!!

One of the things that we swore we would not do when we bought a house was have half finished projects that sit around forever. However, we have realized that this is going to happen no matter what because of the cost of updates, and the fact we have animals. To be more specific in this case, we have a Snickers... 

...and Snickers has separation anxiety that shows itself through accidents. On top of that, she has favorite spots to have her accidents, and while we could have her crated throughout the day to prevent said accidents, Nico cannot be crated because there isn't a crate he can't escape. This is a problem because he might freak out that she is crated and he isn't and go all Hulk on us. But I digress. 

Snickers has her favorite accident spots. She LOVES to have accidents down on the basement landing, probably because that is the furthest she can get from where she spends most of her time. However, not only was this causing some serious stains due to her neon yellow pee, it stunk. No matter how much cleaner I used, I was feeling like you could smell it anywhere in the house. So we decided it was time to rip it up....

Look at all those LOVELY yellow stains! I promise, we did clean them with a cleaner after they happened, Snickers just has super staining pee. Go figure. 

So I ripped up the carpet and the pad. Some things we found were not a surprise. Like the dirt. That was not a surprise. However, we were surprised that the concrete had been sealed by the builders before the carpet got put down. YAY! However, we were still going to seal it ourselves with the smell blocking stuff after using the enzyme cleaner. But first, we had to rip up the carpet tack. I was expecting that to be really hard to do since it was in concrete, but it wasn't. The downside is that there are now dents in the concrete from it coming up with the tacking strips. 

So the tacking got pulled up and we scrubbed the floor down with the enzyme cleaner and got to sealing. We put two coats of the sealer down and called it good. We then found that just because it was sealer doesn't mean it doesn't stain. So we cleaned again, painted over the stains and then used a polyurethane coat on top of the sealer. Although the sealer says it is "clear drying" the sealed floor now has a yellow tint. However, this is a temporary solution and the polyurethane coat means that we should have quick and easy clean up for any more of Snickers' accidents downstairs. Once we have the deck we'll look into tiling the landing into the laundry room so that it has a nice finished look. But for now, we'll take the not as nice look, but no longer smelly sealed concrete look. 

Basement finishing has begun! With ripping stuff out...

I realize that most basement finishing projects probably don't begin with ripping out drywall and framework, but then again most basement projects don't deal with the previous owners of our house. So, yes, to begin the process of finishing our basement we have to start by ripping out drywall and some, if not all, of the framework that the previous owners did. This is because they did not pull any permits for the work so none of it is any good as far as the county is concerned. Quite honestly it wasn't good as far as we were concerned either since we couldn't use any of the outlets in one of the rooms without the cords overheating and destroying whatever we plugged in. Just what we want to happen with electricity right? (note: that was dripping in sarcasm).

Before we started the ripping out project Elizabeth talked to the county about what all we needed to do. We started out just by looking on the county website and that was intimidating as hell and started to freak us out. Luckily when she called the county and explained what was going on and our plans they gave her the name of one of the building officials who came out (free of charge!) to look at what we had going on. He said the previous owners were "f-ing idiots" and confirmed that yes, we needed to rip stuff out and proceeded to tell us how much the permit will cost (which is not as bad as we were thinking) and what all we needed to do to start. We might call on him again with some additional questions since he was so incredibly helpful to start.

So some things the idiots who owned the house before did :
- Have a SMALL closet right by the door, serving to close off the doorway which would have made it very hard to move any furniture into the bedroom.
- Left the light switches INSIDE the closet.
- Left the outlet boxes just hanging around in the basement.. not secured to ANYTHING at all. Just floating there in the middle of the wall.
- Did not add any additional insulation or fire blocking material that we can tell. This is a problem.

So things we have left to do:
- finish ripping out the drywall
- find out if we need to rip out the frame work
- get permit
- put in the frame work- all or just where the closet would go
- electric
- first inspection.

The order of the above list is not final and probably not in complete order, but it's a start, a very exciting start.