Day 118 - The worst of the basement work begins. (naladahc

Would you believe that after all I've gone through with the stone walls and the previous 9 months of laborous work that I'm actually more afraid of the front porch room?

Yup.

Some of you may remember I was going to start here back in April but then decided to tackle the rest of the basement first.

I suppose I should have started here.

The past summer and winter have not been pretty here.

Not pretty at all.

I know whatever I end up doing over the next week is purely a stop-gap measure.

The entire porch foundation needs to be dug out and rebuilt. That much I do know.

But that'll be up to the next owner.

The next few days will involve scraping and wirebrushing as much of the wall up to ground level.

Once that is done and all of the dust is vac'd up I need to etch the walls and floor with muriatic acid. I need to actually make it a bit worse before it has any chance in hell of getting better.

What will probably suck more than anything is the fact that the space is so tight to work in and I have no ability to actually empty the entire basement out.

I've got a drop cloth up for the dust but the acid etching, and subsequent concrete washing, is going to take some ingenuity.

I think I'll end up basically buy those "rags in a box" things and just sopping up the moisture remains and trash bagging it all.

I'm then going to fill the cracks with a Drylock waterplug acrylic that has some flexibility to it.

The walls up to ground level will then be Drylocked. I will be working as many layers into the pores as possible. I'll probably add some hydraulic cement to the floor/wall base too.

I have old patches on the floor to remove and then that has to get sealed and redone like the walls and other floor I recently finished.

I have 4 weeks to complete this in too.

The basement must be finished, the touch up painting on all 3 floors done, and the house in order within 5-6 weeks to put it on the market.

The countdown begins...