Basement Scheming

So, I finished our taxes and found we now have a small budget for our basement spruce up. Not enough to call a contractor and make it happen, but enough that we don't have to do everything ourselves. Hooray!

I've spent a fair amount of time the last several days educating myself about the options for finishing the space. Neither one of us has a background in any kind of trade that helps up do this kind of work. The closest I ever came to learning how to fix a house is watching my Dad teach my three brothers how to do stuff. (In fairness to my Dad, I wasn't interested in these kinds of projects at the time.) So, I'm approaching this project as one with barely a clue.

I had been thinking we might try to level the floor with a self-leveling mortar, but it turns out we would have to strip the paint off the floor first. That won't be happening this year. So, we're back with trying to find another solution. Sigh.

Yesterday, I found a suggestion for installing 2x4s, called sleepers, directly on the concrete, like joists, and then installing over the top of them. The Complete Guide to Finishing Basements, shows how you can install sleepers and then place shims under low spots. So, for now, that is our operating plan.

I'm also hoping the airspace between the wood strips will dry out in case of a bit of water infiltration on very wet years. The basement has seemed pretty dry now that we've dealt with the earlier water issues, but you never know what could happen.

We're meeting with Tim Austin on Friday (he's the guy who built our garage) to see how much help from him we can afford. =)

Sunny Day = Outside

Today's nice weather found us outside starting some yard projects.

Jeff resumed work on digging out the new urbanite path he started last fall. That huge pile of dirt was excavated when they put in our basement door. Jeff wanted a berm there but got, I think, quite a bit more dirt than he bargained for. So now he's trying to dig a wide trench for the path and figure out what to do with the rest.

Even I made it outside for a bit of sun today. I don't dig, but I did go around and gather up salvaged wood leftover from the 2 years of remodeling. I didn't get all of it, because the remaining pieces were too big for me to carry alone. But I moved what I could to the driveway where I'm hoping we can sort through and see what we can reuse for the chicken coop.

I need to cut some short pieces so I can stack this wood with air gaps so it can dry out.

You can see more about Jeff's garden and path exploits (day 2) over at his blog.

Basement Layout

Some time last year—I barely remember doing it—I put together a sketchup plan for the basement family room finishing. I rediscovered it this week and I've been playing with it, rearranging furniture and trying to come up with a plan so Jeff and I could try and decide what to do.

Right now, our basement is pretty much a cement-lined hole in the ground with a pock-marked drywall ceiling. (The holes in the ceiling were from our remodel when they needed to run new pipes or access existing ones.) I'm hoping we're going to install insulation and some framing with outlets along the cement walls. And a decent floor would be nice. And removable ceiling panels would be wonderful.

This is the general furniture arrangement I'm thinking about, using furniture we already own (except for the TV console).

Side view of Basement Family Room

Rear portion of Basement Family room

Front portion of Basement Family Room

(I actually lucked out and found a Sketchup file for the old World Market Riley bookcase—that we have 6 of! I just needed to find a mahogany finish so I could color them to look more like ours.)

I think we're going to get rid of our existing entertainment center. It's too big and too heavy. The DVDs don't fit very well; some of them fit in the drawers, some don't. And I think we'd be just as happy with a smaller console. So, once we get it emptied, I'll see if I can find someone to take it off our hands. Though, frankly, I've seen a lot of these large size entertainment centers on craigslist lately, so we might just have to donate it to get it gone quickly.

We'd like to finish the floors in cork plank flooring, color TBD. Perhaps this Sand Dune if they have it at our local store.

All the walls, and probably the ceiling, will be painted Hubbard Squash. We have TONS of hubbard squash paint leftover from the upstairs painting project. I don't know what I was thinking when I calculated how much we needed. I must have expected to do more coats, or paint the ceilings, or something, because we have more than 5 gallons left! And that paint was expensive! So, we're gonna use it.

I dropped by the library today and picked up a few books on finishing basements, so now I'm poring over those to see if I can figure out what to do about our uneven floors.

Still Sifting

I've been busy doing more sifting. I am finally in the right frame of mind to go through tough piles and boxes of stuff and get rid of everything that doesn't need to be here.

One of my first tasks down in our basement clear out project was to grab a box and fill it with all the loose piles of paper everywhere.

I've spent the last couple of days sorting paper and I've filled up our recycle bin. And yesterday, I finally managed to catch up Quicken again. It took all day. (With virtually all our bills on auto-pay, I've found it difficult to pay close attention. And, frankly, bookkeeping was more "exciting" when Jeff was working.)

I've also got a box of books ready to donate to the library. And I'm starting to list stuff on craigslist to sell, but if the things don't go in the next few weeks, we'll just donate everything. Time to clear out!

It's going to take us a while to really clean out this basement area if we do it "right" and don't just pack up everything and stash it "temporarily" someplace else. But, I'd like to downsize into this house. We won't be moving for a long time, and I don't want to live my life here surrounded by SO MUCH stuff.

A Dutch Colonial built in 1916

And for a change of topic, our weather was nice yesterday, so we took the opportunity to walk to the library. I saw another house in Laurelhurst with a porte cochere — a Dutch Colonial. Interesting design.

At the library, I checked out a pile of books, so I was happy to have Shasta's help carrying them home. By the time we made it home, she was definitely "done" with the cart — it took quite a bit of encouragement to get her to go the last couple of blocks. Of course, once we got home she still had some energy for play time.

Next up, unfortunately, taxes. I hate doing taxes, but if I get them done now, the pain will be over and I can move on to emptying the basement family room.

(Just finished our taxes. This year was not bad — big refund! We're getting back an old AMT credit. Basement spruce up, here we come!)

Sifting the Basement

At long last, we are finally sifting our basement "lair" (soon to be known as the library and family room). This is the space in the back half of the basement where we were living and sleeping during our remodel, and where we continued to sleep until we refinished the bedrooms last December.

When we moved into the upstairs bedrooms in December, we had the movers bring back the rest of the bookcases; they're still sitting in the same spots, wrapped in moving blankets. And we still have a huge pile of books in boxes sitting in the next room. I probably shouldn't show a picture, because the space is such a mess, but I suppose a bad Before picture makes for a more impressive After picture.

We obviously have not been motivated to make forward progress on this project. But, the weather will be nice soon, and if we don't turn our attention to this basement project, we'll find we've paid for storage for another year. At this point, we're just wasting money.

Really, all we have to do down there right now, is pull down the ceiling and finish rewiring the last of the knob and tube so we can close out our open electrical permit. (We left it open after the garage project because the electrician said it would be OK to include the basement as well.)

Anyway, in the last couple of days we've packed up the full bookcases down there, as there is no sense everything getting covered in sheetrock dust. And the bookcases will be a lot easier to move around if they're empty.

We are still vacillating on the scope of the project. We could just fix the wiring and call it good for now.

Or we could cover the ceiling, though since we still haven't finished the master bathroom remodel, I don't want to install sheetrock again. I would prefer to come up with a removable surface. I was thinking about installing sheet beadboard, sort of like suggested in this blog, then we could take down panels where we needed to access the plumbing.

We're also trying to decide what to do about the floor. Should we clear everything out and just deal with it now? Or continue to use rugs on the cement floors. I'd sort of like to finish the floors as suggested by The Family Handyman website.

Of course, the more bits we add to this job, the faster it turns into a "real" project. We don't want to spend the next several weeks working in the basement, and we don't want to spend a bunch of money hiring help. But, we need to get out of storage, so we'd better decide fast. We need to be done and the house cleaned up again by summer.

Laurelhurst Research

In the past week or so—when I was procrastinating making runners—I finished up my Laurelhurst data spreadsheet. For most houses, I have the year they were built and who the first owner was. I now have a pretty good idea of when the bulk of the houses were built in Laurelhurst (hint, the 1920s). I also have a fairly good list of the builders of Laurelhurst.

My information is far from perfect because if an individual bought a lot and hired a contractor to build the house, the old permits would be under the owner's name, so I have no idea who the builder was. But, quite often, builders would buy several lots and build spec homes. Also, my list only includes information for houses where the original permit was available; quite a few were missing.

Now that the weather has started to turn toward spring, I've also been able to get outside and take some pictures of houses. Invariably, I am drawn to houses built in the 1910s because they were more often Arts & Crafts style or bungalows, which are obviously my favorite.

Anyway, I have a growing photo album of pretty homes located in Laurelhurst. Is this something you guys are interested in seeing? I can post them occasionally, but I don't want to bore my followers to death . . .

Here are a few to give you an idea.

Ida McCain built this house

Ida McCain built this house

Another house with a Porte Cochere

This house is just begging for a red roof

Not sure what style this is—an Arts & Crafts Four Square?

Okay, that's enough. If you guys want more pictures of houses this year, let me know in comments . . .

Dining Room Table Runners

I finally finished sewing the dining room table runners! It's taken days because working with the linen was really frustrating, so on this particular project I became really distractible. Anything—even laundry and dishes—seemed more fun than finishing these runners.

It seemed like it took forever to cut them out, because I was being anal careful to make sure they were nice and "square." I even pulled threads to make sure the edge was nice and straight, which was not easy since this particular linen is fairly nubby and the threads kept breaking.

And I was frustrated when after "cutting" out the first runner for the dining room table, it turned out to be 2-inches too short. I don't know how that happened . . . I was being so careful with my measuring. (Too much thread pulling?) So, I had to make a second. (That linen strip will not go to waste—it will be used elsewhere.)

Then I needed to iron what felt like a mile of edges to turn them to make the mitered corners. There was a lot of scorching of fingers as I measured and held down the fabric the right amount and then set down the steamy iron next to my fingers.

This was a bit of a learning process. I got better at the mitered corners and the final hemming as I went along. Maybe I should have started on the dresser runners first, because they won't get seen as closely, but the dining room runners happened to be at the top of the pile.

As shown in the photo, I deliberately made these runners a bit shorter than the store-bought ones; I wanted to make sure they cleared the tops of the chairs as I don't like getting tangled up in table coverings when I'm getting up from the table. The stencil does still fit on that short overhang.

But, now that I've learned what a hassle these are to make, I don't think I want to apply my not-so-smoothly-cut stencil. I might need to hold out for the stencil cutting machine, since I'll probably end up buying one. And I have now exhausted my linen supply so if I need to make a new set for some reason, I'd have to buy more of this matching linen.

So, after posting this post, it occurred to me that if I wanted to be able to use these with a family gathering, I would have to make a longer one for when the table had the leaves in it. So, there you go, I'll have to make another long one and perhaps another short one. I am going to have to buy more linen the next time it goes on sale. Hopefully, with my newfound skills, I'll be able to whip it out a bit more quickly and less grumpily next time. =)