A photo montage of our basement. Or a twofer if you like.

There's actually been quite a bit more progress but it gives you an idea of what's been going on.  Since these have been taken, all of the drywall is up and things are at the point of being painted.  We caved and hired a person to finish the job for us.

Jason and our neighbors got almost all of the drywall up one drunken Saturday.  Another neighbor gave us the name of the person who finished their mudding and taping.  We hired him after he checked out the scope of our job, especially since the price was well below what any of us would have thought.  He finished up the drywall, taped and mudded for us.  The basement looks completely different now, if incredibly dusty at the moment.

A year later

and this is where we stand. The basement still isn't done but progress is finally being made. Jason's been working on removing the old paint from the walls and glue from the floor. The grey areas on the wall have been scrubbed clean. It takes hours in removing the paint. We have one last possibility in paint removal before going back to the lovely lead based haze removal.

The floors are slowly being brought back to normal before we lay down self leveling concrete. If you pay attention you'll also see the crappy fluorescent lights are gone! We have proper recessed lighting and the lights on the stairs are working. Took us forever to figure out what the little boxes were.

During the next two weeks a flurry of activity will be happening downstairs. Okay, I admit we also have a deadline with the insurance company in turning the rest of our claim in for the mold damage of last year. Dare I say we'll have a proper ceiling with insulation by month's end? That we'll have brand new bamboo flooring downstairs? Yes, yes I dare.

How many staples does it take?

Apparently 20-30 staples per tread on our stairs. I started removing carpet staples yesterday from the stairs. I still haven't finished because my back gave out on me from bending over. I wouldn't have to do this if I had the tool for removing the tack strips. I also realized there are smaller ones which I glossed over on the first couple of steps. Oops.

Next week two waterproofing companies are coming out for estimates. One I'd initially asked about our carport roof will have his engineer in tow. We'd started talking about the mold issue after he'd shown me the roof. Mike called us yesterday saying he'd talked with his engineer about another possibility for grading our backyard. He won't have a proposal for us until later on next week.

Between the three, we'll have anywhere from waterproofing the outside again to regrading the yard. It'll be interesting to see the different proposals and final costs.