News and the Foundation Makeover

Thanks for the comments on my Habitat workshop. It was a lot of fun to be able to share my furniture makeover tips with some local friends. Tomorrow they are having a workshop on green products for your home including on chalk paint and since I don’t even know much about it, I’ll be there. Watch me on Twitter to see updates.

But what I really want to tell you about is my news of the month – get ready (oh and Happy March) – I’ll be switching to WordPress very soon! I cannot wait. I mean, can NOT wait! It’s about time I make some improvements in this joint right? I know that most of you are not able to leave comments and aside from needing a new look, I’m noticing more and more of the Blogger platform getting a bit wonky, so I’m switching 🙂

But what I’m really here to talk about today ~ and hold your excitement ~ is my 113 year old basement foundation. Which is why I had to tell you the good stuff upfront.

You know I’m renovating our basement bathroom. It’s the second room in the house that we’ve town apart in the same number of years. The first was our master closet.

This time we’ve taken out the 80’s and are bringing in some of our own style. Well as soon as we get some walls up we’ll have style.

After we took out the toilet, vanity and shower and then took down some walls we started ripping up the tile floors. We were actually really excited to take out the old walls since it has allowed us to see the foundation hidden behind the once-finished bathroom.And here’s what we’re working with.

Hold the phone House Beautiful, I’ll be right there.

Glamorous I tell you. We have another wall in the laundry room, which I’ve never actually showed you, that is similar so we expected this. The problem with this wall is that parts of it are coming apart. And this is our house’s foundation so it has to get fixed.

Aside from the water challenges and calcification {that white powdery stuff}. We think it’s from the chimney but we’re not sure.

Old foundations are not supposed to be patched like this. It looks like someone smeared cement over the surface of the wall and that’s not how it’s done. I know at least that much. The stone needs to ‘breathe‘ and by covering it up you’re not allowing it to do what it needs.

Since this basement bathroom is next to a closet down there, we decided, well had to, tear apart the closet too. On the far side of the 2x4s is the bathroom, the room this photo was take in is the closet.

The wall in the closet looks like this.

Here next to the glass block windows, all of that stone is missing. Not good since water can just walk right in.

There is an old covered up vent on the wall. Overall it’s just damp and dark. Like a typical old basement. So we had it cleaned up and re-mortered.

And here it is today. A before and after of foundations if you will.

I think it looks really neat! Like a rustic wine cellar right? We’ve always talked about making that closet into a wine cellar, maybe we can now. Here is the wall in there. {You can see the wine cooler poking out a bit, hint hint}.

Not the most exciting of projects, but one of those that has to get done.

Do you have any not-so-glamorous projects going on at home?