Basement!

I’m 12 days from finishing this semester, and we’re 21 days from an epic roadtrip into the mountains, and what does Kevin decide to bust his ass doing? FINISHING THE BASEMENT. Oh shiiiii- we’re going to have the most ass-kicking basement ever. What’s on the docket? Insulated walls, VCT tile floors, swanky furniture, arcade games, a bar, and lots more. Here’s the start:

Stairs!

This project is back-burnered somewhat, but that doesn’t mean I can’t think about things now. I’m talking about STAIRS!

We’ve got a one-level pillbox ranch house, so any dreams I had about lovely Newell posts, grand staircases, and whatever else are pretty much out. However! I do have one set to put my mark on, and that’s the stairs going into the basement.

even Saffron is a little creeped out standing on them

Up until very recently, I mostly tried to ignore them. They were rickety things, covered in the same shit-colored carpeting as the rest of the house, and always a little too shallow for my comfort. It was honestly an area of the house that I tried to ignore as much as possible. Vacuuming them never made them look any better/cleaner. They always gave just a little too much whenever you’d walk down them, too, and whenever I’d be carrying laundry down, I’d try to push the story about how Kevin’s mother fell through one of the steps out of my head. I had to work even harder at not thinking about them when Kevin took a good look at the underbelly of the staircase and found that the treads were basically just flimsy boards held in place with nails on either side, and no supporting brackets or boards or whatever you’re supposed to use to keep your stairs from cracking under the pressure of anything that weighs more than a hot dog.

Sigh.

I was at clinicals (the nursing school kind) a few weeks ago, and Kevin sent me a blurry cameraphone shot of something indiscernible, although I thought it looked like carpeting. It was basically a crappy version of this picture:

Gross. And now, we’ve got this:

The improvement is obvious, although the amount that the stairs give when you’re walking down them is ALSO quite obvious now. And scary. Eventually, these stairs will be replaced with sturdy ones that we’ll never have to worry about falling through. Yay! As for design, Anna over at Door Sixteen has done a couple of posts (1, 2) on staircases from which I’m going to draw heavy inspiration. I’ll have to keep my eye on Ferm Living for the next time they’re having a wallpaper sale. Oooh, or Minimoderns (yum).

A room takes shape

Kevin has been working his ass off on the basement bathroom, trying to get it as close to “finished” as possible before the wall-anchor guys show up to shore up the basement and make sure our house doesn’t collapse into a crater in the earth. Isn’t that nice of him?

Just starting to frame up the walls

In order to install the shower stall we chose, he’s going to have to move the floor drain a little, which entailed busting up a square of foundation that hasn’t been touched in about 60 years. First, he tried using some sort of diamond-edged saw blade. Then he tried using a hammer and chisel. THEN, he Hulked out and just hammered away at the concrete like John Henry and that’s what did the job. Look at that virgin soil! I should snag some for the garden this year.

the results of a little John Henry action

I can’t wait until the basement is done and we can get to work getting Galaga and Space Invaders cleaned up and up and running again.

walls mostly framed

Can I tell you how happy I’ll be to get a rebate check from our electric utility for all the insulation we’re buying up for the basement?

walls framed, outer-wall insulation up, starting on the drywall

Hey, guess what! It’s hard to take pictures inside a tiny room. It’s turning into a legitimate bathroom, though! Yay!

DRYWALL!