Basement: Before and After Epoxy
After letting the basement epoxy dry and cure for several days, Liz and I finally went back downstairs today to take a look.
After letting the basement epoxy dry and cure for several days, Liz and I finally went back downstairs today to take a look.
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).
I woke up at one point in the night, when Liz gave me a slice of cheesecake. Which I ate, and then promptly went back to sleep. Woke up again shortly after midnight, when someone in the neighborhood set off some firecrackers. Kissed Liz. Then fell asleep again.
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).
Met up with Jake and Anais tonight, for a night out in Hyde Park. We gave them a quick tour of the house, and headed over to Jolly Pumpkin, which Liz and I had yet to visit.
It was a Friday, with perhaps more traffic than usual. We had a lot of snow in the afternoon, and a lot of accidents on the route we were on. We crawled along I-55 for a good while, and want to say we ended up walking in the door about two hours after we left.
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 pretty slow day in Valpo. A lot of putzing around, not much of anything beyond relaxing. I snapped this photo of Liz, sharing a new favorite beer with Julie.
Somehow, between the presents and breakfast, Jahnu lost a tooth!
Attending this service is something all the relatives in town would do, accompanying my Grandma Phoebe. Since she passed, it wasn’t clear if we would be going again.
My dad decided he wanted to attend, and so the two of us decided to go by ourselves.
There were some ok exhibits, and some less than stellar exhibits. To be honest, I enjoyed things most when we were all making fun of the lights.
Liz and I spent a slow day getting ready for a weekend away. After packing, we hit the road in the late afternoon – but not before stopping at Vanille, to pick up a few treats.
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.
The list grew from when I first took that photo (above). But I think we have a solid set of goals, and an aggressive timeline. We grouped our list, tackled the tough task of figuring out the best order… and a lot seems to hinge on the basement getting completed (with epoxy). The basement is kind of the gate to everything that follows.