PKT25: Touring the House, Part 5: Basement Private Areas
Yesterday, I spun through the parts of the basement that were accessible during parties. Today, I'll cover the rest of the basement.
If you came down the stairs from the first floor, you'd find yourself at the pop machine. To the immediate right was a doorway to a hallway with a cement floor. For parties we'd pull the television stand into this hallway and lock the door. The rest of the time, this way was open to the rest of the basement. There were three directions you could go from this doorway:
To the Left
If you went to the left, you'd find yourself in the boiler room of the house. As you'd expect from a three story house with radiator heat, the boiler was pretty substantial. We got it serviced every year, and it actually impacted our budgeting. The fraternity's emergency fund, by long tradition and/or possibly an official rule, was required to have enough money in it to replace the boiler if it ever died. Given how expensive that boiler probably would have been I doubt we actually ever had that much money, but fortunately it was built like a tank and didn't have any problems while I was there. The example was, however, not academic. At one point a pledge class visited the Phi Kappa Theta chapter at Ohio State and discovered that their house was very cold because the boiler had died. Instead of repairing the boiler they had opted to buy beer for the OSU/Michigan game party, which is an interesting prioritization decision that we never would have done.
The boiler room was pretty substantial and was usually one step away from turning into a junk room. When we remodeled the kitchen, the old counters and cabinets were installed down here to create some storage for house improvement equipment. We got an old band saw somewhere, and I think maybe a drill press. There was some free weights set up in here for several years, which made for a hot workout when the boiler was going. There were also several support poles that had been installed. The room above the boiler room was the chapter room, and during parties the floor of the chapter room often moved disturbingly up and down from the dancing. The support poles helped, or at least gave the illusion of helping.
Through the boiler room was the old pool room, which was I've mentioned was not quite big enough to allow clear shots on all sides of the table. Therefore, we moved the pool room into the old television room. We then moved all the laundry machines into the old pool room, which allowed us to add several more laundromat style washers and dryers to our laundry capacity. Some people also stored their bikes in here during the winter.
Straight Ahead
From the hallway door, you could go into the rarest of creations, a 1/2 bathroom that only had a shower. It was by far the nicest shower in the entire house, and people would walk down to the basement to use it from pretty much every room in the house.
To the Right
If you went down the hallway to the right, it would dead end just past a left turn. The dead end was a half height closet tucked under the stairs to the first floor. This was the house manager's closet, and once you crouched down to get into it you would find that it was the storage place for cleaning supplies, garbage bags, light bulbs and other such sundries.
If instead you took the left turn, you'd first come to a doorway on the left. This small room was the original location of the laundry room when I joined the house. When we rearranged everything, Tony put a ton of effort into making this room a small bedroom. He built a custom bed frame with drawers that fit under the small window, and improvised a closet. He dubbed this room The Sewer because the sewer stack was there. It was actually pretty cozy - but then the flooding mentioned in the prior post happened, we had to snake the stack several times before we ended up replacing the sewer line, and very quickly The Sewer was a room nobody wanted to live in. By the end of my tenure it was basically just storage.
Moving on down the hallway, you'd end up at a small intersection featuring four doors, a stairwell and a mop basin. Let's check them off in clockwise order.
- The mop basin... was a mop basin. Sorry. I think we re-poured the cement once, if that makes it more exciting.
- The door next to the mop basin was the Steward's Closet. There was some spare cooking equipment stored in there, but mostly it was just used to store pop for the pop machine since it was both near the pop machine and lockable.
- The stairwell went up to the backdoor to the driveway and continued all the way up to the second and third floors. There was no stop on the first floor though.
- The door to the right of the stairwell led to the bedroom called The Dungeon. I honestly don't remember if that room even had a window at all, and the situation wasn't helped when my old freshman year roommate K-Rob painted it entirely black so that the light was simply consumed by the walls. It got somewhat better when Jackal painted it green with a sponge pattern with some help from a girl named Meg, but it was still a dark, dark room and I'm glad I didn't have to stay in there.
- The next door to the right was a small half bathroom which was almost exclusively used by the residents of the basement.
- The last door at this intersection was for a bedroom called The Wine Cellar. This room had a lot more windows and was substantially larger than the Dungeon. It wasn't terribly soundproof though, and anyone upstairs in The Bakery could often hear what was going on in there.
The major plus side to living in those rooms was privacy. Nobody wandered down there casually, so if you needed to close the door and study there were few places better for it. It was also very close to the best shower in the house and the backdoor to the driveway, so it wasn't unheard for people in those rooms to almost disappear for a week at a time if they felt so inclined. They shared the PKT1 phone number with The Catacombs.
The last two posts talked a lot about rooms that were substantially rearranged while I was an active, so here's a quick summary guide.
19962001
Small Laundry RoomThe Sewer
Pool RoomBig Laundry Room
Television RoomPool Room
The CatacombsStadium Seating Television Room
And with that, let's head upstairs to the second floor with its six named bedrooms covering ten total rooms and three phone numbers, two and a half bathrooms (sort of), porch, mailboxes and a hallway big enough to hold a sofa!
ADDENDUM:
- Susan confirms that the Dungeon had a window.
- Ducar says that the mop basin didn't actually exist until the mid-90s.
If you came down the stairs from the first floor, you'd find yourself at the pop machine. To the immediate right was a doorway to a hallway with a cement floor. For parties we'd pull the television stand into this hallway and lock the door. The rest of the time, this way was open to the rest of the basement. There were three directions you could go from this doorway:
To the Left
If you went to the left, you'd find yourself in the boiler room of the house. As you'd expect from a three story house with radiator heat, the boiler was pretty substantial. We got it serviced every year, and it actually impacted our budgeting. The fraternity's emergency fund, by long tradition and/or possibly an official rule, was required to have enough money in it to replace the boiler if it ever died. Given how expensive that boiler probably would have been I doubt we actually ever had that much money, but fortunately it was built like a tank and didn't have any problems while I was there. The example was, however, not academic. At one point a pledge class visited the Phi Kappa Theta chapter at Ohio State and discovered that their house was very cold because the boiler had died. Instead of repairing the boiler they had opted to buy beer for the OSU/Michigan game party, which is an interesting prioritization decision that we never would have done.
The boiler room was pretty substantial and was usually one step away from turning into a junk room. When we remodeled the kitchen, the old counters and cabinets were installed down here to create some storage for house improvement equipment. We got an old band saw somewhere, and I think maybe a drill press. There was some free weights set up in here for several years, which made for a hot workout when the boiler was going. There were also several support poles that had been installed. The room above the boiler room was the chapter room, and during parties the floor of the chapter room often moved disturbingly up and down from the dancing. The support poles helped, or at least gave the illusion of helping.
Through the boiler room was the old pool room, which was I've mentioned was not quite big enough to allow clear shots on all sides of the table. Therefore, we moved the pool room into the old television room. We then moved all the laundry machines into the old pool room, which allowed us to add several more laundromat style washers and dryers to our laundry capacity. Some people also stored their bikes in here during the winter.
Straight Ahead
From the hallway door, you could go into the rarest of creations, a 1/2 bathroom that only had a shower. It was by far the nicest shower in the entire house, and people would walk down to the basement to use it from pretty much every room in the house.
To the Right
If you went down the hallway to the right, it would dead end just past a left turn. The dead end was a half height closet tucked under the stairs to the first floor. This was the house manager's closet, and once you crouched down to get into it you would find that it was the storage place for cleaning supplies, garbage bags, light bulbs and other such sundries.
If instead you took the left turn, you'd first come to a doorway on the left. This small room was the original location of the laundry room when I joined the house. When we rearranged everything, Tony put a ton of effort into making this room a small bedroom. He built a custom bed frame with drawers that fit under the small window, and improvised a closet. He dubbed this room The Sewer because the sewer stack was there. It was actually pretty cozy - but then the flooding mentioned in the prior post happened, we had to snake the stack several times before we ended up replacing the sewer line, and very quickly The Sewer was a room nobody wanted to live in. By the end of my tenure it was basically just storage.
Moving on down the hallway, you'd end up at a small intersection featuring four doors, a stairwell and a mop basin. Let's check them off in clockwise order.
- The mop basin... was a mop basin. Sorry. I think we re-poured the cement once, if that makes it more exciting.
- The door next to the mop basin was the Steward's Closet. There was some spare cooking equipment stored in there, but mostly it was just used to store pop for the pop machine since it was both near the pop machine and lockable.
- The stairwell went up to the backdoor to the driveway and continued all the way up to the second and third floors. There was no stop on the first floor though.
- The door to the right of the stairwell led to the bedroom called The Dungeon. I honestly don't remember if that room even had a window at all, and the situation wasn't helped when my old freshman year roommate K-Rob painted it entirely black so that the light was simply consumed by the walls. It got somewhat better when Jackal painted it green with a sponge pattern with some help from a girl named Meg, but it was still a dark, dark room and I'm glad I didn't have to stay in there.
- The next door to the right was a small half bathroom which was almost exclusively used by the residents of the basement.
- The last door at this intersection was for a bedroom called The Wine Cellar. This room had a lot more windows and was substantially larger than the Dungeon. It wasn't terribly soundproof though, and anyone upstairs in The Bakery could often hear what was going on in there.
The major plus side to living in those rooms was privacy. Nobody wandered down there casually, so if you needed to close the door and study there were few places better for it. It was also very close to the best shower in the house and the backdoor to the driveway, so it wasn't unheard for people in those rooms to almost disappear for a week at a time if they felt so inclined. They shared the PKT1 phone number with The Catacombs.
The last two posts talked a lot about rooms that were substantially rearranged while I was an active, so here's a quick summary guide.
19962001
Small Laundry RoomThe Sewer
Pool RoomBig Laundry Room
Television RoomPool Room
The CatacombsStadium Seating Television Room
And with that, let's head upstairs to the second floor with its six named bedrooms covering ten total rooms and three phone numbers, two and a half bathrooms (sort of), porch, mailboxes and a hallway big enough to hold a sofa!
ADDENDUM:
- Susan confirms that the Dungeon had a window.
- Ducar says that the mop basin didn't actually exist until the mid-90s.