Chronicle of the Basement Transformation

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Fucking move, dude.

[Stahlseele]

Nah, i just stay away from those power sockets.
As long as nobody fucks with stuff, everything works!
And it is kinda on the cheaperish side because it is an old building and wonky stuff like that . .
Haven't had a rise in rent in years, which is fortunate, because i will be getting my first raise in income in years coming next month <.<

[Iduno]

Nah, i just stay away from those power sockets.
As long as nobody fucks with stuff, everything works!

Plus, the shorts keep your kitchen lit, even without lightbulbs.

[erik]

Everythingisfine.jpg

[MisterDee]

The Yearly-or-So Update:

Remember this cool project?

Yeah, it's still moving forward at a snail's pace.

We fixed the garage floor and foundation last December, a high-ticket item. We also had to redo one bathroom due to a leak (yet another case of the previous owner's brother-in-law fucking up - a nice marble tile job, but the drain for the Italian shower was a glued-together frankenjob because they don't actually make the part in the size the previous owners wanted.) The insurance paid for the bathroom, mostly, but that still meant a budgetary hit.

And we're doing the roof at the end of the summer. Which will eat up the remaining credit we can realistically use safely.

Silver lining: that's the last big-ticket item before doing the drain (and landscaping afterward), which is the last big-ticket item before doing the basement. Yay.

Barring windfalls (which aren't out of the question - I've really impressed my bosses lately) we're looking at maybe doing the drain during summer 2022. We really need to reimburse some of that borrowed money before committing to any more big budget items. So given that we're looking at several years before finishing the basement properly, I'm going to make it usable for now.

The upcoming step is fixing up the drywall where we had to tear it out to test for mold and to fix foundations cracks. That's a (relatively) small out-of-pocket expense, and (for once) a do-it-myself job. And actually a fine "learn to do it" project for me - it doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough.

I will do it in the next few weeks (was planning on doing it this weekend, but massive rains means it's not the time to go buy drywall)

[RobbyPants]

Sorry to hear about the setbacks. I'm glad insurance covered most of the bathroom.

[Whipstitch]

I missed the electrical stories the first time around but I'm not missing a chance to commiserate. On the bright side, my step dad was am electrician and a proud man just in general so I grw up in a house that was buttoned down rather nicely. On the downside, my basic working knowledge of terms meant it was even scarier when I talked to my landlord about chipping in to get a whole house surge protector installed and it became clear that he had wired much of the place himself and that he didn't seem to understand the difference between an interrupter and a surge protector.

[OgreBattle]

Every time I see this title I think of a Kafka transformation into a basement

[MisterDee]

We Got Roofed

The roof, the roof, the roof is replaced.

By which I mean the shingles, the waterproof underlayer, the damaged plywood below, the various air and plumbing vents, and the clown-quality ducting done by my nemesis, the previous owner's brother-in-law.

Thankfully, we didn't run into any new surprises beyond what we already knew about. So no late-minute jumps in the bill.

A fun aside - two of my neighbors also did their roof this year. We went with a roofing specialist, one went with general contractors, and one poor guy did it with friends. We got done in a day, neighbor 1 in a weekend and neighbor 2 took over a week. So... money well spent, I think.

Next step: the aforementioned drywall job. Since the last update the boys brought home Kindergarten Plague, which wrecked our schedule completely.

[Thaluikhain]

A fun aside - two of my neighbors also did their roof this year. We went with a roofing specialist, one went with general contractors, and one poor guy did it with friends. We got done in a day, neighbor 1 in a weekend and neighbor 2 took over a week. So... money well spent, I think.

I can't help but think that this is a modern reinterpretation of The Three Little Pigs.

[Simulated Knave]

I, too, struggle with a legion of home problems due to previous owners. You have my eternal sympathies, especially since yours looks even worse than mine for the owner having done stupid things.

Looking at those pictures you took, though: your basement is cold because your basement is uninsulated. That's got to be massively driving up your heating bill, even with Quebec's cheap hydro rates.

Getting some insulation in those external walls would help a lot. You might actually have the budget for insulating and plasticing it yourself - it's not THAT hard (though taking drywall down is messy), and the plastic would keep your kids from getting into the insulation until you can afford to drywall it. Or just drywall it, even. The mudding is the time consuming and expensive part of that.

I mean, it's also cold because it's a basement. My crawlspace is well-insulated, and still quite cool - I find it handy for the way it temperature-stabilizes my house. But the lack of insulation is a ton of your coldness and dampness.

[MisterDee]

Actually, the basement is insulated to Seventies standards: EPS panels stuck to the wall to a depth of four feet below grade. They had to tear parts out when they fixed the cracks in the foundation, so that's why we don't see it on the photos. I'm planning on doing a quick fix for that this fall when I finally get time to fix the drywall.

Fixing the garage slab and foundation seems to have fixed a large part of the humidity problem anyway - it's not perfect, but we were able to wait until the hottest and wettest part of the summer before the humidity got beyond "comfortable" levels and we had to run the dehumidifier. It's encouraging - I imagine that with a fixed drain, best-practice insulation and waterproofing, and best-practice (or at least up-to-code) ventilation we'll be able to have it perfect.

I do appreciate the sympathies though. We hit another snag lately - we need to change the torsion springs on the garage door. Not a huge expense, just one I kinda wish would have happened six months from now. More frustrating is that I objectively cannot blame the previous owner for that - well, I imagine that the surface corrosion on the spring due to storing pool chemicals in the garage for decades doesn't help, but then again it means the springs are decades-old so they're kind of due anyway.

(In the spirit of the thread: changing torsion springs is absolutely not an amateur DIY job. Finding the parts is a pain, you need specialized gear, there's some math involved, and the slightest mistake can end up with a foot-long steel rod flying through the air at bullet speed, ripped-off fingers, and the like. Your time and safety is worth a lot more the couple hundred bucks extra getting it done will cost you.)

[Simulated Knave]

Ah, OK. Insulation really does make a shocking difference - a friend of mine recently added some to a basement room that largely lacked it, and the difference is huge. It used to be dank, and now is pleasant and dry.

I think you imagine right.

If it's any consolation to you, my guy redid the roof and didn't put any tarpaper on - just shingles over wood. You CAN apparently do that. But it means I need to spend a lot of effort shoveling the roof clear.

Re the torsion springs: Very much so. I've always found it best to get someone else to fix things with lots of moving parts. My fingers are very valuable to me.

[erik]

Last week I fixed a tub faucet that was leaking by swapping out the cartridge.

It had started dripping, then was inspected by a plumber who said it was "only a $30 part, but labor would be over $300 (390 regularly, 313 since we were already on a protection plan)", and a couple days later it started just flowing with hot-hot water so we had to turn off the water to the house as our default state. I bought the part for $50 since I wanted it faster than the 2 weeks the non-Prime options offered, and was able to fix it the next day in <10 minutes time and I wasn't trying to set any speed records. I did need to buy a wrench to be able to turn the pipe (got a strap wrench, was easy to use), so that's another $15, but happy it worked out.

I'm always anxious I'm going to make a more expensive problem whenever I do my own plumbing.

I was appalled at how expensive the labor was going to be for what is a 5 minute job for an expert. I wasn't there for the assessment, and I have a habit of giving excessive benefit of the doubt, so I think the plumber was trying to hint that we should do it ourselves since his company makes them charge an exorbitant amount -plumbers not typically rating $4,000+/hr. I imagine, as their regular price was $390 for part and labor.

YouTube as usual was my savior here. It's helped me through Dryer repairs in the past, and was clutch this time too.

My next home adventure is removing a big paper wasp nest that looms over our front door. We honestly don't use that front door, but my kid refuses to mow the lawn anymore while that nest presides. The wasps do be kind of aggressive tho. I was standing 15-20' away and pointing at it when telling the boys how safe it was, and some wasps started buzzing me directly from the nest.

So far my genius plan is to get a cloth sack on a 10' pole, pull it over the nest and close the loop with a slider, then chop the branch with a long tool that my parent's have. This would be performed at night, but with someone videoing for entertainment purposes.

[MisterDee]

For what it's worth, there are some wasp-killing products that can shoot that 20' range straight out of the can. I used that once and it worked fine - any wasp you kill beforehand is one that can't escape your sack.

[erik]

Amateurs! Using deathcans when I could be angering stinging murderwasps for a video instead!

Yeah. That's what my dad did like 20 (30?) years ago when we had a big ole nest next to our house. Donated it to my old grade school and it was used as a hanging decoration for like 10 years before enough kids used it as a target to slap when jumping high that it was taken down.

(edit: I should clarify, my dad did the sensible thing and used poison and I think my brother held something to make smoke since supposedly that pacifies them some, but pretty sure the poison did all the work)

[deaddmwalking]

I definitely recommend spraying with wasp killing poison first - there's no reason not to. Shoot it and then come back the next day and shoot it again. At that point the wasps will have abandoned the nest so you can just knock it down.

[Foxwarrior]

no reason? erik just said he was making a video.

[MisterDee]

So, the pandemic kind of put its own twist on things. Having usable space in the basement became a necessity, so "creating an awesome basement in a few years" got preempted by "I need a livable basement NOW''.

So I did the quick fix to the insulation (i.e stuck EPS panels where they'd ripped them out to fix the leaks), put up drywall (my mudding skills are obviously not up to par, but it's still better than looking at concrete, studs, and hastily fixed insulation) and put down the cheapest, easiest to eventually remove flooring option.

That turned out to be interlocking foam tiles, and I'm quite happy with the result. Got the home gym dark gray version half-off from Canadian Tire which brought the price down far enough that I didn't feel it was money wasted for a temporary fix. It's nowhere near perfect - the color varies significantly by lot, and the cut isn't perfect so over a large area there are spots where the seams are visible. But it's fantastic as insulation and it's a great surface for the kids to run and roughhouse in.

Plus once we get around to actually doing the basement as I want it, it's an hour's job to remove them (and then we'll be able to reuse them elsewhere if needed.

Overall a solid pick - if you need to buy those in large amount, shop around a bit. There are several options (fake wood, color, etc.) which pretty much all retail for the same price per square-foot. But they do go on sale semi-regularly. That said, they're obviously not good for forever flooring (any slightly heavy furniture you put down will leave a permanent mark, cats love using them as scratch pads, etc.) and they don't look great even new. But they're hard to beat as a semi temporary option.