About a month ago we decided to tear out the walls in our basement. It is a damp and musty place. And, lo and behold, the basement has been drier ever since we ripped out the paneling and the wallboard. I know it hasn’t rained much but it hardly oozed a drop during the hurricane. I’d say that’s progress.
We’re going to either put a sealer on ourselves or contract someone to do it. I think we’re leaning to contracting someone since we want longer than the 5-year guarantee that we found on the sealer can. I’m not sure what a contractor will want to do but I’m really interested in actually using that space down there. It isn’t well heated and there isn’t any air conditioning down there so our work is cut out for us. The only thing we use it for is the litter box (actually the cats use it for that purpose), exercising and we play the occasional game of pool.
Anyway, you didn’t want to hear me ramble on about what might be. You want pictures of destruction. I’ve got them for you. The first picture is of the nasty drop ceiling that half of the basement had (truly the dropped ceiling stopped half-way across the span of the basement). The better-half hated it and it came down pretty easily. Oh, you can see the swinging paneling in this shot too.
The next picture is a shot of how nasty the walls were behind the paneling. That thing standing up is a crappy electric heater.
I used the shop vac down there last week and sucked some of the efflorescence off the walls. It doesn’t look nearly as bad as the picture now that it has dried out and that stuff is off the walls.
The interesting thing about ripping out the walls and ceiling was that we finally got the answer to our suspicion that part of the basement was once another room. We have an extra door in our garage and it is painted the same color as some of the old trim in the basement. But, the puzzler is why the room was never finished and why it was ripped out before we bought the house.
Did I ever mention that the guy living in our house before we bought it (from his brother) only lived in the basement? He only went upstairs to use the bathroom and the coffee pot. I lie not.