Back to the Back of the Basement

After another hiatus, Liz and I resumed work on the house today – specifically in the basement. Here we are getting powered up on coffee, about to head down.

A bit rusty on our mixing procedures, Liz starts up the mixer.

Our first batch was… not great. It was much too soupy (think pancake batter), and didn’t really solidify much. We ended up having to open a second bag and manually mixed in more concrete, to try to firm things up.

Liz, doing the hard work of trying to keep things on the wall. As we got further down the bucket, things improved a bit.

Second bag, we thought some of the “clumping” was causing us problems with the first batch – so we tried to manually break up any clumps that formed in the bag (due to moisture seeping in).

Ultimately, we used less water and took our time mimxing. Going a bit slower, we landed on a mix that seemed to match the consistency of what we both remembered.

Connecting the back corner. We got about this far and stopped, as it took us a while to get through two bags. We’ve got one left, and we think we need one more to finish up the final stretch.

Outside, Liz was tending to the plants in the backyard while I mowed the lawn. As I was finishing up, she pulled out an old fire pit that we had purchased… and then stored under our porch for like 2 years. We just never got around to setting the thing up.

The box it came in has since completely disintegrated. But…

it still looks good! We’re just going to conveniently forget that this has been under our porch for a year or more, and simply refer to the “patina” of the fire pit from here on out.

Haven’t tested it just yet, but with Daylight Savings giving us an extra hour… perhaps we’ll bring out some wine one night next week.

Related:
Saturday is Basement Cleanup Day
Back to the Basement