By the time we finished, we had hit our goal of four rows. Anything more, I think, would have been too taxing… as Liz and I were both moving slower and slower towards the end. So at least now, we have a solid sense of how much work we can reasonably get done in one “session,” whether that’s a week night or weekend day.
So far, I’ve been doing the cutting and Liz has been handling the main areas with a roller. We’re planning on two coats, given how much paint the joists soak up – so the work is steady, but slow going. The crazy thing to keep in mind is that we’ve already painted these joists… but the paint just gets soaked up by the wood.
We’ve been having issues with our hot water of late. I don’t usually take long showers in the mornings, but from time to time, I’ll be in there for a while. The last few months, both Liz and I have noticed the shower water getting colder, a little faster.
Spent some time after work today, painting in the back basement. Previously, we’ve put on some primer and a single coat – and tonight was just applying a second coat to finish things off.
Today for our house day, Liz and I continued working in the basement. We had a few big tasks on the docket: patch up the cleanout with cement, repair some of the brick along the baement walls, and start to bring back a few items we moved out when we cleared the basement, in December.
On Friday, the Craftsman 41″ 8-Drawer Rolling Cabinet we ordered came in. It’s been sitting in our entryway for a few days, but we got around to moving it to the basement late Sunday evening.
After letting the basement epoxy dry and cure for several days, Liz and I finally went back downstairs today to take a look.
It’s begun! With the basement fully cleared and washed/cleaned (not “>once but “>twice), we hit a pretty big milestone. Today (and tomorrow), we’ve got someone coming to apply epoxy onto our concrete basement floor.
We went back and forth a bit – with Liz putting down the mixture, letting it sit for about 5 minutes, then scrubbing the areas. After that, she rinsed the area with the powerwasher as I helped clean up everything with our shop vac (a tool I’ve grown to really love, these last few weeks).
Liz, suited up and ready to work with some concreteready repair. We’re working with this stuff because it sets very quickly, and can have epoxy applied to it in a short amount of time (versus a multi-day curing time for regular concrete).
We’ve done several runs to paint stores, to try to track down the epoxy we need. And I also went back and forth to our local Ace a few times, trying to put together a MacGyver-like apparatus to enable us to use both hot + cold water for the power washer. The apparatus ended up failing, so we had to go with just cold water (which honestly wasn’t too bad).
With us having just gotten back home yesterday, Liz and I were reluctant to suit up and begin work on the house again. But after a late breakfast, some Star Trek, and a review of our Google Calendar plans… we realized we had a strict schedule to keep to.
A long while ago, when we got new plumbing for the house, we had a lot of exposed pipes in the basement. There was a small cleanout that we had marked (with the blue tube, in the photo above). But over time, we lost track of it. And eventually, it got forgotten and covered over, when we refilled the pit.
After a big house day yesterday, Liz and I were still planning to do some work today… but to end early, so that we could enjoy a bit of our Sunday, relaxing. Which… sorta happened.
While I was planning on just doing some errands and a supply run, I shifted into this mode where I just figured I should keep on working and actually do the insulation install.