The Basement Project: Pre & During

This summer, the Summer of 2010, will stand as the Summer of the Basement for the Dekker family. After three years in our home, we decided to reclaim our dusty, bumpy-floored, paint-peeling, slightly-leaky, 92-year-old basement. We knew we couldn't completely remake the room without $8000 and a contractor willing to jackhammer the floor, but we decided to do everything we could to make it work for us.

This first set of pictures are all the before pics. Notice the fading yellow paint, the piles of stuff...

...the giant hole in the wall (leading into the crawl space under our kitchen)...

...more stuff and faded paint...

...bare lightbulbs with pull strings, the old lead sink, unnecessary furniture.

And then there was the ceiling. Originally the ceiling was covered with the old lathe and plaster - standard for the time period. But over the years, as subsequent owners added duct work, electricity, and the like, everyone hacked and tore out pieces of it.

This left a tangled web of wires, duct work, and unused gas pipes.

Plus the miscellaneous cold air return duct here and there.

Step 1: demolition. A group of friends joined us with hammers, screwdrivers, and reciprocating saws. We didn't get enough pictures to really capture the filthy mess we created. Mostly because we were so covered in dust and grime that we didn't want to touch the camera.

As we pulled down the old ceiling, we found decades of a grimy dust piled up. This is presumably left from years of gas heating and lamps.

This picture of our brother-in-law Chip captures the mess. The dust just coated us.

As we pulled the ceiling down, we got to see the beautiful floor joists. The room felt bigger just opening the ceiling up. Other things we did (not pictured): pulled out old wooden shelves from the fruit cellar, yanked out unused nails and screws from the wall, removed disconnected gas lines, pulled out an old set of phone lines and connections, and took out unnecessary cold air return ducts.

And then, slowly, the rebuild process started.

First steps included hauling loads and loads of rubble out of the basement. (In the meantime, everything that normally resided in basement was stacked in the garage.)

We scrubbed the walls and floors with trisodium phosphate. We secured ductwork, tied back cords, vacuumed and wiped down the floor joists.

We pulled lots of unnecessary wires, pipes, and ducts.

One of our biggest mini-projects (and proudest successes) was the hole in the wall.

Beth armed herself with mortar and a stack of bricks we found around the basement and in the garage, and set to work.

And voila! In addition to fixing the wall, she filled in missing bricks underneath many of the windows.

And then, using lumber we found in the garage, plus a couple finicky masonry drill bits, we framed out the hole, built a door, hung it, and spray foamed the gaps. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Meanwhile, we started out painting. A friend loaned us a paint sprayer, which turned out to be an absolute God-send. It was the only way to successfully paint a ceiling full of wires and bumpy brick walls, and it really saved us untold time and stress. We painted the ceiling a charcoal gray - we found the paint randomly in the boneyard of a nearby Lowe's. The price: $30. And the color was perfect.

There aren't any pictures of the wall painting in progress, unfortunately. We discovered that, after hitting the front wall with the TSP, we were getting some bigger leaks with the heavy rains. Nick patched up the big holes with hydraulic cement, and then positively coated the lower walls (beneath ground level) with Drylock. It's a paint mixed with cement, so that it forms a sealing coat on the wall. All of the walls were painted a whitish-beige, concocted out of the 5+ gallons of miscellaneous white-ish paint we found in the basement.

In the final stages, our friend Ben - a professional plumber - generously donated his talents in moving some water lines, installing a new utility sink (see above - $35 on Craigslist!), and extending the water lines so that we could move the washer and dryer. Ben did everything with commercial grade quality and materials.

Once Ben was done, Beth and our friend Karl went through and installed can lighting. This eliminated most of our exposed bulbs and recessed the lights up in the floor joists.

One of our last problems was the old lead sink. When Ben moved it to install the new sink, we found that its frame was nearly rusted away (see below):

This is very dangerous, considering that the sink weighed almost 500 pounds. We couldn't give it away on Craigslist, the city probably wouldn't haul it, and we just didn't have the manpower to move it safely. Fortunately...

...our sledgehammer offered a simpler solution. The sink crumbled pretty easily, and we carried it out in buckets.

And that's the journey so far! Tune in soon for the stunning completion of our basement!

Little drummer boy

Will is fully in love with the drums. He'll ask to go play any chance he gets ("Daddy, dum?), and will often just sneak upstairs to play them anyway.

Two years old!

And just like that, our little William is 2 years old! He's running and climbing all over the place, learning 2-3 new words a day, and able to do more and more himself. He's started brushing his own teeth, he's starting to ride around the tricycle he got for his birthday, and reminds us to pray and sing before we go to bed. At his 2-year checkup, the doctor logged him at 30 pounds 9 ounces, and still a 95th percentile 36.5 inches tall.

On vacation at the Outer Banks, we had a small birthday party for him with the extended family there. He had an ice cream cake and a few presents.

He seems to have this cake thing down pat.

The week after we got home from the Shore, we took Will to the Columbus Zoo for the first time in a while. He seems to really understand and enjoy how that whole thing works, too. Here he is giving a goat a kiss in the petting zoo.

The zoo's newest attraction is an arctic exhibit that features different bears and foxes. The best part was the polar bears; the twin sisters wrestled and splashed in front of the huge glass walls, right at our feet.

Getting to touch some sea life...

Playing around the aquarium...

Taking a boat ride...

After the zoo trip, we stopped for lunch at a taco truck called Taco Nazo. Taco trucks have become a big thing in Columbus, thanks to the work of some of our food blogging friends at Taco Trucks Columbus. They've been mapping and reviewing the variety of trucks around town. It's some delicious, inexpensive, and authentic food!

We ate our tacos and quesadillas just in the back of the van. It's a pretty informal affair.

The birthday boy on the morning of his birthday, eating a favorite breakfast of scrambled eggs, yogurt, and a banana on the front porch. Note the tiny rocking chair! It was an early gift.

That night we had the Columbus party at his Uncle Chip and Aunt Marcia's house. They live right next to the train tracks, so we enjoyed watching 7-8 trains go by during the party. Perfect for the little boy who shouts "Choo-choo!" every time he sees a train, got a conductor's hat for his birthday, and had a train cake.





Happy Birthday, Will!

And even more birds!

The nest in our ferns is now chirping with baby birds! This makes Brood #2 hatched on our porch.

Every 10 minutes or so, the birds will go nuts with chirping as their parents swoop in to feed them.

Whenever he hears them, Will wants to go out on the porch to see them. Here I found him sitting in the rocking chair just watching the birds.

A winged visitor

Apparently our house is becoming an aviary - outside and in! Last weekend, while sitting in the living room with Will, I heard a fluttering sound in our chimney, and it soon became apparent that a bird had fallen down in it. We have a little gas fireplace; the flue is blocked with a metal plate, so I naively hoped that the bird would just find his way out. After spending some time out in the backyard, I came back inside with Will, only to find that the metal plate does not completely block the chimney, as a red-headed woodpecker was flying around our living room!

What ensued was a brief but intense battle of me trying to sweep him out the front door with a broom while Beth held the door open. But the woodpecker kept lingering in the house and flying from room to room. After he fell behind the piano, Beth joined me and together we pinned him against a window underneath a serving bowl cover.

You can see on the sides of the bowl some smears of blood. We think he ran into the ceiling fan at one point and nicked his wing, so everywhere he flew he left little smears of blood (gross, but I cleaned it up). But when we let him go, he flew away just fine, so it wasn't that bad.

Will was a little freaked out at seeing the bird (and such a big one!) in the house, and for the rest of the day he kept asking, "Where is he?" and looking around at the ceiling. We tried to defuse things, though, by showing him the bird after we caught him (and took the above pictures) and tried to keep light-hearted about it. Overall, just another bird adventure in the Dekker household!

More feathery subletters!

Apparently our front porch is prime real estate for bird families! The day after we posted about the birds nesting in our wreath, the little ones were big enough to fly away with Mom and Dad.

But we discovered recently, while watering our hanging baskets of ferns, that another family has started. This nest is a little harder to see (we almost washed them out before we saw them), but we managed to get some pictures. Can anyone identify these eggs? The parents look similar to the previous family, so they might be house wrens, too.

And even more laughter...

More fun times around the Dekker household. Beth and Will started racing to see who could eat their peas faster at dinner, and Will decided to start jumping the gun. You'll hear him counting 1, 2, 3. As Beth says in the video, it's one way to get him to eat his peas.

More laughter with Will

Here's our little boy at it again, laughing away. Enjoy!

Our new subletters

For the second year in a row, a family of birds has taken up residence in the wreath on the front of our house. We're not sure exactly what kind of bird they are - finches, maybe? (Ornithologist friends, please let us know...) Anyway, five little chicks hatched a couple weeks ago and have been peeping like crazy. They're getting pretty big now, and this morning we snapped a couple pictures. Here they are on the lookout for mom and dad bringing breakfast.

While mom and dad hover warily nearby.

And here's a close-up of the brood. I hope this becomes an annual event - it's fun to see them build the nest and to see the chicks grow.

A trip to Calvin

Last weekend we ventured up to Grand Rapids to spend time with family and speak at the Calvin Theatre Company. The Wild Goose Creative crew was invited in to talk about what we're doing. We spent Monday afternoon strolling around Calvin's campus with the kiddos, and decided to take some pictures of Will and Max at their future alma mater. Above is Will in the Lab Theatre.

Playing on the cheese...


And the three of us behind the Bolt-Heyns-Timmer dorm, at the spot where I proposed to Beth.

Laughing with Micah

After dinner tonight Will started racing his cars across the dining room table, while our friend and roommate Micah made funny faces. Will thought it was gut-busting hilarious.

You'll also hear him say something like "Ah nee!" while pointing at Micah's plate. He's pointing out that Micah is "all done" with his dinner.

Pudding Pops

Chip and Will played hard in the backyard this afternoon, so they got to enjoy some pudding pops on the porch! Following in his uncle's footsteps, Will got more on him than in him - but I think he liked it.

Relaxing and getting better

The group of us are sick with colds, ear infections, and the like around here. But I guess that means we'll just have to try and relax while watching some Sesame Street.

I got the blues

Another step for our budding musician! Last week when we stopped to visit Beth's Grammie and Pop in eastern PA, he was given a harmonica, like his second cousin Liam. At first Will couldn't figure out how to make sound with it; when he put his mouth to it he would actually hum the sound. But yesterday he figured it out, and we caught this little this morning. Now when he's feeling down he'll know how to play the blues.

Featured

Hello, all! We are honored to have our house and decor featured in Apartment Therapy's online site in their Home Tours section! Thanks to Jennifer who came and did the interview and took some great pics! Head to Apartmenttherapy.com to check it out!

Cabin fever!

Recorded this afternoon on the porch. Is this boy ready to get out of the house and play, or what?