The Seedy Underbelly

My winter project is going to be to get the basement completely gutted. As you can see from the pictures below I've got quite a bit of work to do. I need to go through 7 years worth of kid's stuff and see what needs to be saved, what needs to be sold at a yard sale, and what needs to be trashed. Only then can I continue tearing apart the old finished areas. My goal is to have a completely empty basement to serve as a blank slate.

The door at the top of the stairs will eventually be removed. I'm going to put in a couple winder stairs coming down from the main level so I can move the stairs back a foot or so for better head clearance at the bottom.

This used to be a guest room. It was probably the most "finished" room in the basement, although for some reason it reminds me of the office from "Joe Vs. the Volcano".

Another view of the old guest room. The closet is against the east wall of the basement. The wall on the left will be removed to open up this space so we can use it as the family room. Current plans call for an "Old Hollywood" theme and a large flat panel TV on the wall.

This is the tiny, decrepit old bathroom circa 1980. Everything will be removed, the footprint will be slightly enlarged, and the new bathroom will be consistent with the work we have done on the main floor.

This is our current laundry room. It will remain a laundry room, but it will be properly finished with some built-in cabinets and ironing board. (How many code violations can you count!?)

The boxy room on the right is the bathroom. The room on the left will become the new guest room. I'll have to put in an egress window and a closet, but it will end up being a good sized guest room (about 10'x12')

Finally, our tour takes us to what will the the other half of the family room. The wall to the right is the one that separates this space from the "Joe vs. the Volcano" office. You can just see the edge of the bathroom on the left.

The plan is to first gut the entire basement, then put in new PEX plumbing and run CAT6 cable everywhere while everything is accessible. I'll figure out the rest at that point.

New Hardware for Sideboard

My mom got me a gift certificate to Rejuvenation for my birthday. (Thanks Mom!) Today I finally figured out what to spend it on. I got some new knobs for the sideboard to replace the Queen Anne teardrops that were on it. I went with the Mission Pyramid knob in oil-rubbed bronze. The shape echoes the knobs in the kitchen without being to "matchy-matchy". I like the way the black is offset against the white. I still need to replace the hinges with some original style ball tip hinges, but that will be quite a bit of work so I'll save it until I refinish the whole sideboard

Quick Tip: Skewer Your Caulk

Ummmm, yeah....



I like to use a bamboo skewer from the kitchen to puncture the inner foil seal on new tubes of caulking. Then when I'm done, I use it to seal the tube. I find it works better than the little cap that sometimes comes with the caulk.

Giving Props to the Garage

If you read my last post you might have asked yourself "Where did all that crap come from?". Well, about 1/3 of it came from the garage. The other 2/3 came from the basement demo that I started 2 years ago. Here's a shot of the garage interior. Notice the different colored ceiling joists? If you look closely you can see the white ones are sistered with the other ones, but none of them run the full width of the garage. It was always a mystery to me until one day I was looking down at the floor, which was only visible because most of the crap was now in the dumpster! It turns out my garage has had 2 additions. I always knew it was expanded in depth, but I finally put 2 & 2 together and figured out it was also widened at one point. They didn't bother to put in new full-width joists, instead opting to cut the original joists in half, spreading them apart and using a few nails to sister the white boards to the old ones. Needless to day, after time they started to sag.

Solution: Jack up the sagging joists, drill holes all the way through, and bolt them together. It's not as elegant as actually having full-width boards, but it will have to do.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I know I've been absent for quite a while, but I promise you haven't missed anything. Back in June I told myself I'd get loads of work done on the house this summer, but it was not to be. I had too much fun on vacation, and then when I got back I had to go all-out to get a massive systems upgrade done at work. Well, we "went live" this weekend so now work is off my back for a while.

Here's a quick photo journal of what I did this summer.

Sorry for the blurry photo, but this is one of the few house-related tasks I got done. I filled this dumpster (by myself!) with crap from the garage and basement. Unfortunately, I've got enough stuff left over to fill another one or two.

After I got the dumpster filled, I got to spend a week on a boat. A really BIG boat! Here we are anchored in Jamaica. Yeah Mon!

And here we are anchored at the local beach bar. (I'm the one enjoying a nice "domestic" beer and a jerk chicken sandwich. Yummmmmm.)

While in port at the Cayman Islands, we were captured by pirates. The kids were forced to swab the decks.

And take the Pirate Oath.

We managed to free ourselves from those scurvy-dogs and get back onboard the Conquest where we gorged ourselves on copious quantities of mediocre buffet fare for the next 2 days. Finally we docked in Galveston and the fun was over. Back to the grind.