(no subject)
My basement is the infinite bugaboo of home repair. In the entire house, nothing has received as much attention, for so long, as the basement.
When we moved in, the basement was dark, humid, and dangerous to get to. It serves both apartments in the house with no division, and both stairs were steep, rickety, and crooked. The front had a concrete floor; the back was dirt with concrete pads for the (shared) washer, oil tank, oil furnace, and stair landing. The foundation throughout was brick on stone.
In the years since, I've torn down and moved our stairs; replaced the back stairs; replaced the bulkhead stairs and the bulkhead; added lights everywhere; replaced the sump pump; put plastic, solid insulation, and plywood over the dirt floor; added several new perforated drains under the ground to take water to the sump; insulated most of the ceiling; taken out our oil furnace and tank and replaced them with a natural gas furnace & water heater; tore out the old bathroom that was there; and replaced the old back bathroom drain, which came down in the middle of the basement and blocked the bulkhead, with a buried one that emerges near the wall.
I spent this weekend filling in the trench from the last operation (which happened almost a year ago), hooking the sump pump back up, and replacing the plastic/insulation/plywood floor.
And it's done. I've got as much storage as I'm ever going to have down there, and I've done about everything I can think of. I still need to move stuff around (we're safe from ground water, but we occasionally get minor flooding in the front from rain or meltwater coming through the stone foundation), but it's essentially complete. I'm happy.
When we moved in, the basement was dark, humid, and dangerous to get to. It serves both apartments in the house with no division, and both stairs were steep, rickety, and crooked. The front had a concrete floor; the back was dirt with concrete pads for the (shared) washer, oil tank, oil furnace, and stair landing. The foundation throughout was brick on stone.
In the years since, I've torn down and moved our stairs; replaced the back stairs; replaced the bulkhead stairs and the bulkhead; added lights everywhere; replaced the sump pump; put plastic, solid insulation, and plywood over the dirt floor; added several new perforated drains under the ground to take water to the sump; insulated most of the ceiling; taken out our oil furnace and tank and replaced them with a natural gas furnace & water heater; tore out the old bathroom that was there; and replaced the old back bathroom drain, which came down in the middle of the basement and blocked the bulkhead, with a buried one that emerges near the wall.
I spent this weekend filling in the trench from the last operation (which happened almost a year ago), hooking the sump pump back up, and replacing the plastic/insulation/plywood floor.
And it's done. I've got as much storage as I'm ever going to have down there, and I've done about everything I can think of. I still need to move stuff around (we're safe from ground water, but we occasionally get minor flooding in the front from rain or meltwater coming through the stone foundation), but it's essentially complete. I'm happy.