Two Studs and A Hammer

Basement Demo

We got a lot done this past week and weekend. I won’t say it wasn’t without tons of sweat! At least three of the days we were working on the house it was in the upper 90′s. Thankfully we had a couple of fans to blow some cooler air throughout the house or I think I would have melted like the wicked witch of the west.

First off a couple of things we did before venturing into the basement.

Put a new temporary front door on the place with dead bolt. It isn’t pretty by any means but more secure at least. Oh and it’s not exactly weather tight either, but again it’s just temporary and all the plaster and lathe have to come off the walls before we put the permanent door in.

Front Door

Front Door to Porch

Started working on the bathroom. Ripped out the vanity that was falling over and the toilet. Figured we should pull up the layers of vinyl in there as well before we put in the new vanity and toilet. What I found underneath was a pleasant surprise. The original and in great condition tile floor. Bonus! I don’t have any after photos but the floor cleaned up nicely and looks great. Not sure if we’ll keep it or not but it’s a million times better than the nasty layers of vinyl that were there.

New Toilet

New Vanity

One more thing we wanted to do was put a fresh coat of paint on all the walls and ceilings. We didn’t patch any walls or anything but new paint can go a long way to making a room feel more clean. We have a large industrial paint sprayer so painting the whole house, minus the kitchen, took all of 30 minutes.

Quick Paint Job

Time to venture into the dingy, dusty, cobweb infested basement.

There was a total of 2 additional rooms put in down in the basement, both of course in total dis-repair, and a second bathroom. I’ve seen wayside bathrooms cleaner than this one. So on two of the 95 billion degree days we spent it gutting out the basement of all rooms and walls. Taking out the basement structures was really hard work. I’m not sure I’ve ever sweat so much in my life. Thankfully Barry’s son was there to help us otherwise we’d probably still be working on it.

Room #1 half taken out

Room #2 before gutting

Bathroom with beam me up scotty shower

This is our growing pile of debris about halfway through gutting the basement. Probably wouldn’t take much to set this old dry wood ablaze.

Bonfire anyone?

Two days later and the basement is gutted! I am so glad that is over. I’m really quite surprised at the lack of interesting things being found in walls and under floors. I expected at least a couple “isn’t that interesting” finds. But nothing as of yet.

After everything was taken out we started up the 4000 psi pressure washer, the floor buffer, and went to work making the basement sparkling clean. Smells good to, like fresh squeezed orange juice.

Where room #1 was

Room #2 Gone!

All clean!

Now that the hardest part of the work is done it’s time to move on to the more fun stuff! We are going to take a little road trip to the Habitat ReStore store and see what treasures we can find for kitchen cabinets. It just so happens there’s an outlet mall on the way as well, might as well stop there to right?

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