Saturday Basement Day

We had a slow start today, but ended up spending a lot of time working on the basement. Bob dropped off some plywood for us last night, and we prepped a few sheets with Kilz primer.

As Liz was doing that, I worked on cutting up some old wood/debris, and started taking apart our old basement door.

News flash: a sawz-all really saws all.

The old doorknob.

Much prettier in the light.

An older keyhole. I’m not even clear if this did anything, or if it was just decorative.

Outside, we filled up our trash bins and had a small, impromptu fire.

Once we got done with our cleanup (removing a lot of trash, doing a quick pass with our shop vac), we worked on cutting up some plywood to continue strengthening up the walls.

Unfortunately, we got to this point and had to call it. Liz and I made a lot of measurements, and felt we got things pretty close. But when we went to go and dry fit the piece, things weren’t quite aligned.

The lines for the studs were off, and the angle of the bottom seemed off. When we fit it in place, there was an angled gap (on the long side of the L) that didn’t seem right.

We looked at it for a while, unsure of what next step we needed to take to correct for the misalignment. After a lot of back and forth, Liz decided we needed to call it for the day.

I have to say that at this point in time, it was a frustrating experience. Liz was measuring and calling out numbers, and I was trying to translate all of that to the wood.

It was pretty slow going for me – particularly the mental mapping of what needed to happen, in order for us to create the right sized piece. Not only was I trying to understand the basic mechanics of what needed to happen, I was also trying to understand Liz’s strategy for how she wanted to tackle the problem.

After several dry fits and attempts to fine-tune, Liz felt we should call it. By this time, it was after 5PM, and we had been working for almost five hours. And had skipped lunch. We were getting slower, and while we both wanted to just keep going and figure it out… stopping was a really good call.

We did well on our last attempt, but this attempt was more challenging. I felt unhappy we weren’t able to complete this task, but overall we did have a really productive day.

Related:
Basement Wall Work
Measure Twice, Measure Twice Again
Adding Plywood to the Basement Walls
A New Security Door in the Basement
Plywood Painting