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As most of you already know, last summer when we had our house up for sale, we discovered a fairly major mold problem in the basement, which necessitated completely gutting and rebuilding the basement.  Not a fun prospect but we didn’t have a choice.

Everything in our basement got piled into the garage. My nephews did the majority of the gutting, and everything but the inside walls of the bathroom was torn out.   In the process, we also decided to open up the stairwell so it didn’t feel quite so much like going down into a dungeon, so the stairwell wall came out as well.

Once that was done, the walls had to be pressure washed and the floors had to be etched and pressure washed to remove the mold and prep the concrete for the waterproofing coatings, all the while trying to dry things out as quickly as possible so we weren’t adding to the problem by letting moisture sit.

Alpha went online and found a product for waterproofing concrete, so that was next.  The product was a three step process; first a white rubbery coat that basically soaks into the concrete, then some blue putty-like stuff that went in all the holes and cracks, and a finishing coat of the rubbery paint. The stairs had to come out for this to be done, which meant that anytime we needed to go downstairs, we had to go out the front door and around to the garage, where we very gingerly made our way through the maze of furniture to the door into the basement.

Once the waterproofing was dried and cured, the walls were framed. We had already decided to scrap the sauna since we’d probably only used it a handful of times since moving in, so the entire back end of the basement was made into one big room for my studio. Alpha didn’t mind giving me so much space as I had already agreed that we would put in a home theatre system, which he’s been wanting for a long time.

Alpha’s nephew Nathan helped with the drywalling, then we hired someone to do the taping, mudding and sanding. Paint came next, then the flooring, lights and baseboards.  During this entire time (this took us through the winter and into spring) the contents in the garage had been moved around a few times as things were pulled out to be given away, or brought upstairs as we found we needed to use them.  I also had a box of essential crafting supplies in the front hall closet, as there was no way I would have survived the winter without it.

Finally we were at the point where we were ready to start moving back in, starting with my studio.  I had a ball getting everything all set up and organized in my new space. Alpha also got the home theatre set up and we had friends over to enjoy the first movie with us, which was absolutely fabulous.  There’s nothing like kicking back in a lazyboy in your own home watching a movie on a 110″ screen.

As we brought the rest of the furniture back in, we also set a bunch aside to either go to the dump or into the garage sale,which we held about a month ago.

Alpha has been working on getting the stairs finished up, and there are a couple more finishing details that will have to wait until we get back from Europe, and then our basement will be completely finished again, finally.

Photos of the Family Room renovation

Photos of Nancy’s Studio renovation

Photos of the Stairs renovation