Basement's ups and downs

The basement may still look like a mess but the decluttering is progressing.

I took Monday and Tuesday off this week to work on decluttering the basement.  I did get the table cleaned off only to fill it back up so I could start sorting and arranging my tools.  Last summer my father gave me most of his tools to take home from Alaska.  I needed to buy another standing tool chest to store them in.  I spent Sunday going through them and sorting them by use.  I also need to sort through the many different types of nails and screws it would help to know what I have instead buying something I already have.  I got a good start before calling it a day. 

Sunday evening I emptied the freezer and stored all the food on the 3-season porch for the night.  I unplugged the freezer and allowed it to defrost over night.  Monday morning I moved the freezer back against the wall dividing the finished and unfinished basement.  Then I wiped the freezer down and started to organize it.  Almost all my vegetables come from my garden and I freeze my vegetables in one pint bags.  I fill 2-gallon bags with the same vegetables since it is easier to pull out larger bags than pint size bags when looking for something.  I was able to consolidated bags and place older dated items near the top to be used first.

After I finished arranging the freezer I could finely change the furnace filter. I have an Aprilaire air filter which only needs to be changed once a year. It normally gets changed each September before I turn it on. I never expected to have the freezer still in front of the furnace when I moved it early last spring to paint the floor. I should have known better since it always takes longer than expected to finish a job. Once I finished that I moved my router out of my sewing/craft room back into the unfinished section. Next the stationary bike was move out of that room to its old area next to the furnace. I am not sure if the bike will stay there but I am no longer tripping over it in the sewing room.

Polished Light Fixture

The dirty panned light fixture.
















While moving everything around I found three light fixtures I have been storing in the basement.  Last year, I had two fixtures rewired, a pan light for the dining room and bathroom light.  I kept putting off the installing them since I am leery about working with electricity.  The pan light fixture needed to be cleaned, I found time to do it and it looks great.  The third fixture I got as a Christmas gift from my Dad and planned on installing it in the hallway.  I made a decision that if I plan to straighten out the basement I need to take the time and finish many of my UFO (unfinished objects) so I can free up space.  What an original idea, HUH!


Cleaning up the leaking water along the north wall.

Tuesday was a day with many ups and downs. I went downstairs to start working and noticed a small puddle of water leaking from the basement dividing wall. I walked around into the sewing room and found a large puddle of water coming from the middle of the north wall. The puddle was less than a 1/4 inch deep but it covered a large area. I was lucky since I put my picture framing supplies on plastic grids so nothing was ruined. I did need to move everything out of the area so I could mop up the water with old sheets and towels. The leak was behind the drywall and I been trying to fix leaking in the sewing room by changing the landscaping around the house in hope that I would not have to tear out the drywall. That will be a big job. We had over an inch of rain from Monday night to Tuesday afternoon. The water did not flowing from the leak until late Tuesday night.

The broken down sprout.

After I mopped up the water and laid down dry towel to soak up anymore water coming in, I walked around the foundation trying to figure where the water was coming from. I found the lower section of the northwest down sprout fell off allowing the water to soaking next to the foundation allowing it to find it ways into my basement. I use sheet metal screws to hold it in place. I hope this will sweep the water away from the foundation now. This spring I will need to remove the decorative stones and back fill the area with more soil tilling it away from the house. If that does not stop the leakage I will then need to pull down the drywall and fill the foundation cracks with hydraulic cement. Past changes in landscaping on the south side have stopped the leakage problems on that side of the house.

After but I still trying to get the light on the right to work.

Bathroom before









Later I installed two of the light fixtures. I did the bathroom light checked the to be sure it work and then put in the hallway light. Later in the day the bathroom light stopped working and every since I been trouble shooting the problem with no luck. I decided the dining room light could wait until my brother comes for a visit because I do not think I can move the heavy ceiling fan from the ceiling and then replace it with the pan light fixture.

Hallway Before

My new Hallway Light.

Tomorrow I will be back in the basement working again and checking the wiring in hope of finding the problem.

Moving Forward

The cement basement walls are waterproofed and I started to celebrate until I looked at the wall dividing the sewing room from the unfinished basement.  While looking at that marked up wall I just started laughing at myself.   Oh well, painting dry wall is alot easier.

I still have a fourth of the basement floor to finish before I am completely done

100 Percent Converted

In March I completed the goal of converting three appliances over to gas.  The first was converting the oil furnace over to gas.  I have been planning on do this since I first moved in October 15, 2004.  That fall I had the gas company bring a line up to the house.  I waited until the spring of 2008 to replace my oil furnace with a new efficient gas furnace because I did not want to go in debit paying for it.  I informed the company installing the furnace that I would in the future install a gas stove and water heater, and to plan on that when installing the gas pipe.

I spent over a year looking for a gas stove on Craig’s List before finding a GE Profile gas stove in the fall of 2010.  Again I reminded the guy installing the gas line to the stove that there was still a hot water heater in my future.

Since the first day I moved into this house I have been arguing with myself about when to replace the electric hot water heater.  The reason why it took me so long was I could not decide to go tankless or not.  The installation and tankless heater was around $3000 in 2004 compared to a tank water heater, it was about 1.5 to 2 times more expense.  There were other reasons why I put it off, the water in southwest Wisconsin is heavy with lime and I questioned just how long the pumping would plug up.  Just look how close the limestone is to the surface; the picture shows an excavation for a nursing home expansion just north of my house.  If you lived here the water must be softened, the lime just builds up to quickly.  I discussed the tankless option with the pumper before deciding and he did not suggest tankless heater.  His reason was Wisconsin cold winters can cause a large different in temperatures with the water coming into the house and the tank ability to raise the temperature hot enough.  The frost does go deep into the ground, -20 is common here in January.  He also stated the tankless heater needs to be serviced twice a year.

The research I did before I talked to the plumber and I had been leaning toward the tank water heater.  I had them install a 40 gallon tank with power exhaust on March 21.  I do have a chimney but I never allowed the furnace or the water heater exhaust through it because I keep having a CO₂ monitor going off in the middle of the night with the oil furnace.  I also had many headaches in the winter and I believe there is a crack in the chimney.  When the roof needs to be done, the chimney is being pulled down.  I know it is part of the original design to my Sear’s house but it is unsafe and useless now.  I did mention the CO₂ monitor going off to my ex-furnace man but his remark was the monitors are just too sensitive what little I knew then.

Now I can check off converting over to gas. √

PS: On Saturday, I sealed the remaining wall with hydraulic cement.  This coming Saturday I can start painting the wall.

Basement Update



The finished job of cleaning out the northwest corner



The mess was half cleaned up before I remembered
to take the picture.



The last three weeks have been busy in between fighting a sinus infection.  I did get the northwest corner cleaned up and moved to the new shelving I put up in the northeast corner.  Before I could set up the shelving I need to cut down a pipe with old wiring in it.  I believe this wiring may have been where the original fuse box was located.  The pipe was cut off about 6 inches above the floor when they removed the old pipe and wiring.  I first tried a hack saw and then moved to use a jig saw to cut the pipe and final used a hammer to nock the partly sawed pipe off.  Using the hammer loosen the cement around the pipe so I mixed up just enough cement to fill in the area around the pipe and let it set a week before I could touch up the floor paint.

The wires were not live.

A week later I finished touching up the floor and could start setting up the shelving.  That Saturday, I stop by the local lumber yard and brought a ¾” sheet of plywood for the flooring of each shelf since it was cheaper to cut the flooring to size than to buy it precut.  The unit I brought you can buy the end shelves and the number of railing need for how many shelves you need and I decided on four shelves.  It took a day to move all the stuff and arrange it on the shelves.   I also moved the table and pulled the washer and dryer out from the wall.  Now, I finally have access to the remaining wall section that needs to be fixed.

The finished cut pipe.

On Saturday I starting removing the loose section of concrete with a scraper and finished removing loose paint and concrete with a wire brush attached to my electric drill.  The wire brushing is necessary but the cloud of dust in the basement is bad.  Before I started I stuffed towels in the crack between the basement door and first floor and also the doorway to the finished sewing room in the basement.  A dust mask (not the white fiber mask) is a must along with ear muffles and a face mask.  I can only take about an hour before I need to take a break and let the dust settled before the next round.  It took about 6 hours with all the breaks before the wall was done.  I spent all Sunday vacuuming and cleaning the layer of dust that I created on Saturday.  The worst part is now over and the remaining work on water proofing the basement should be easy.

A 2009 Checklist

I wrote in my last post that my next project was to thoroughly clean my house. Last Saturday, I spent time washing all the surfaces in the kitchen that included walls, floor, cabinets, and appliances. Before putting back all the notes and magnets back on the refrigerator, stop long enough to review the notes and found this note named “NEXT YEAR 2009 TO DO LIST”.

Reviewing this list has brought back memories and there are still many unfinished items.

1. Finish Swan: Years ago I brought my Mom a topiary swan frame from http://www.topiaryinc.com/ and used sphagnum moss to fill out the frame. She received this one Mother’s Days. In 2008 the Kickapoo River flooded town of Gays Mills, my Mother was lucky the yard, garage and basement were flooded but not living area of her home. The topiary swan was sitting in that dirty water and all the old sphagnum moss was removed and need to be replaced with fresh moss. I did finish working on the form in the spring of 2010 and it now back in her garden every summer.
2. Put together the Turtle: Another topiary frame, Rittenhouse use to sell a turtle basket frame. The turtle was finished in the summer of 2010.
3. Fix electric outlet hole on the outside of the house: The hole until this year plugged with a broken shovel handle until this summer. I filled it in with foam but need to fill in the remainder of it with wood putty. This is the wall I stripped off the paint and will finish next spring or summer.
4. Paint dryer hole cover: Before I brought the house the washer and dryer were placed in the northwest corner of the basement. A previous PO finished the north side of basement and the washer and dryer were moved but the old dryer vent was never closed off. I filled in the vent hole sanded it down and painted late 2008. So I must have made this list sometime in the fall of 2008.
5.  Make Bamboo Trellis: Completed in the spring 2009, this is the trellis which I weave my squash vine through.
6.  Wash unfinished south basement wall: completed in 1/3/2010
7.  Fix crack in wall: South basement wall, 2/3 of the wall was finished early spring 2010 and the remaining wall this spring 2011.
8. Fix Cracks in floor: Complete over the 2009-2010 winter. See Moisture and Water Problems Part 3 
9. Paint Finished Craft room floor: See #8.
10.  Wash Closet Walls: Not done closet show in Moisture and Water Problems Part 3 
11. Paint Closet Walls: See #10.
12.  Shellac Closet doors: My bedroom closet has wooden bifold door which only ½ of the bifold door is done.
13.  Hang Closet door: Not done do to #12 not being completed.
14.  Lay out garden around telephone pole and box: Still on my To Do List but other things become more important so this keeps dropping down on the list.
15. Call for a Watch Dog before digging up the garden around telephone box: Waiting for #14.

This is the fourth winter I been working and the basement and hopefully the last. I found that if I just put waterproof the basement as a project and had to wait four years to cross it off my TO DO List it would be discouraging. So I have been breaking down large projects into smaller projects so I feel like I accomplished something.

Flashfloods

Wednesday night we have 4-6 inches of rain in one hour.  Here is what it looked like outside my three-season porch.  I just hope all the seeds I planted in my herb garden did not wash out.

Two years ago I saw a bigger water fall with water over flowing the road to the tree on the another side of the creek.  I see this kind of flooding over the road at least 2 to 3 times a year.

I hope to find more time doing updates now since most of the hard work putting in to garden is finished and I harvested my first planting of spinach.  I plan to make a tart from it.

Painting the Basement

The weekend was again a putting one step forward and well maybe 3 steps backwards. Saturday I spent time in the northeast corner of the basement putting hydraulic cement over the areas I cleaned up last week. I had 2½ bucket of cement that was not enough to finish the job. Monday, I will buy two more buckets to finish the job next weekend.


Next I started cutting in the edges and covering the insulation with the paint. It looks much better if the insulation is the same color as the wall. I completely painted the unfinished section of the south wall; it stills needs another 3 coats to completely waterproof it.


The outside corners of the basement have had condensation or frost developing there when the temperature drops outside. The weather has been mild (for winter) most of the week and I been checking for water drops or frost all week and found none. So when I started to paint on Saturday, I assumed everything would be OK. The temperature dropped into the low teens last night and the water droplets started to form and drip down the wall. I was beside myself on how to stop it. I gave up and went to bed and found this in the morning.


I just wanted to curl up on the conch and vegetative all day but around 10 AM I figured out that if I used my heating gun to dry the paint I could keep the rest from dripping down the wall. I took a dry paint roller and rolled over the drip area to remove the drip marks at the top of the wall and started the heat gun. It worked and what was left dried and it warmed up around the upper 30’s to low 40’s so the condensation has not redeveloped. I wished I would have thought of this Saturday night, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. I will need to giving up painting until the night time temperatures are in the 40’s and that will not be until mid or late March.

I decide not to spend all Sunday on the conch instead I pull the turkey carcass from the freezer and made turkey soup, whole grain bread and Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash with Smoked Sweet Paprika. The Spicy Roasted Butternut Squash with Smoked Sweet Paprika is from KalynsKitchen.com, I used regular paprika but I can’t wait to try it with smoked paprika.

While doing all that cooking and baking I was trying to figure out what project I should work on next until I can go back to painting the basement. My first thought was to divide the closet in the front bedroom; this room is my sitting & TV room. I want to divide this closet so I can have a linen closet opening in to hallway next to the bathroom. Then I remember that I need to replace the screen in the screen frame for the back porch door. I also need to finish shellacking the bifold doors for my bedroom closet. The doors are one of many unfinished projects and this one is about 4 years old. Before Christmas, I was trying to finish off many of these projects before the family came for my brother's birthday in December. Since it will be awhile before I can paint, it is time to finish off a few more unfinished projects or as I call them UFO (unfinished objects).

Moisture and Water Problems, Part 2

I may have solved the water problem but does not mean that the moisture problem is under control. I define moisture as humidity not standing water. I might not have water in the basement this year but my house has always been humid. Some people might be thinking the house is to air tight but this is a house build in the 1930’s and still has no insulation in the wall. When you touch the outside walls they are ice cold and you can feel the drafts coming out along the floor and baseboards. I would think there would be plenty of holes for the humid to escape. I will admit that I do need to put in a vent in the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom is on this summer's To DO list but the kitchen will wait until I remodel it.

So what could be causing the moisture problem in the house and basement? After talking to a long time residents, I found out there are springs in the area and beside that there is a creek running through the property behind mind. So all the water draining through the ground passes the house and toward the creek and with the possibility of springs in the area the ground water is close to the surface. Here is a picture showing what happens, when we have a heavy down pour in back of my house. This happens at least three or four times during the year. Last year I saw a waterfall from the creek to the tree showing on the right side.



The walls in the unfinished basement have the paint popping off the wall from the water vapor passing through the walls. The areas are also having a white power building on the wall as show in the photo below. I started to clean the exposed cement wall with a wire brush to remove the loose cement, paint and mineral build up on the walls. I brought wire brushes that I can attach to my drill, it did a good job. After I removed all the loose material I covered area with hydraulic cement. Hopefully this will reinforce the wall and stop the moisture from traveling through the walls. Any cracks found in the foundation also were filled in with the hydraulic cement. After all that, the walls are covered with a waterproof paint.



My goal was to finish the basement over the winter but there are always delays and of over estimating what you are capable to get done. The complete to do list was:
1. Paint the floor in the sewing room and the unfinished section with Watertite paint
2. Finish drywall the closet in the sewing room where the oil tank was. This involved waterproofing cement wall, insulate the wall with Styrofoam, hang drywall, and install a closet organizer.
3. Repair exposed cement wall and paint them with Watertite paint.

The next post will show what I finished.

Moisture and Water Problems, Part I

The basement moisture and water has been a problem since I moved into the house. During the first winter spring melt in 2005, I found water in the carpet but it smelled like cat and I believed my cat was urinating there. So I turned on my dehumidifier and dried the area out after treating and cleaning it. Again in 2006, I thought carpet felt damp but was not sure and could not find where if any water was getting into the basement.

It was not until the winter 2007-2008 when we had 100.1 inches of snow that I did find the problem. The carpet was soaked and there was a low area under the carpet where the water was pooling. The carpet was also acting like a wick and pulling more water into the house. So I torn out the carpeting and threw it away except some of the padding which I use to keep cut worms from destroying my broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and eggplants. So now I finely could determine where the water was coming into the house. The finished part of the basement is the only area where water leaks into the basement. This area is my designated sewing and craft room. Once I torn out all the carpeting and moved the furniture to a dry area, I put on the heat and dehumidifier to dry the place out again. During the summer of 2008, I raised the ground level around the southwest corner of the house since then this area has been dry. I hoped my problems would be fixed.

Unfortunately, during the melt in 2009 I had more water leaking into the southwest side of the sewing room. It does get discouraging when you keep trying to fix the problem and the same problem just shows up in a new place. The source of the water is mostly likely from the snow piled around the front of the house. The snow piles were packed about 10 feet from the fountain. I starting looking around the fountain and found a low area on the southwest side filling up with water under the front porch. At the time I believe the snow was piled far enough to drain away from the house but obliviously they were not. I will need to fill in the low area under the porch but that will not be done until I get to stripping and painting the front of the house. At that time, I will need to remove and replace the lattice skirting around the porch, this will provide the needed access under the porch. For now, I decide the best way to keep the water from coming into the basement was to change how I piled up the snow. Last winter I piled the snow father away and downhill from the house. I made it through this spring melt without any water but this was just one winter. I will have to wait several more thaws before I believe the problem is over.

Sorry, there are no pictures. I was hoping to find some but my basement is a mess since all stuff is stacked up and right now it is impossible to find anything.