Top-Down: Adventures in the Basement

Today I did a bit of picking up around the mess we call our basement. On the serious plus side, there's no water down there. Well, there is, but only in one spot, and it's quite clear that it's the window near the driveway that leaks. We've been managing this by putting towels there. It's not a huge deal. We'll work on cement/caulk fixes to this, as well as a plastic bubble over the window well, once things warm up.

But, seriously, otherwise, there's no water to be found. This is good.

Half of the basement is very basement-y, with fieldstone foundation and a cement floor. The other half is strange to me -- it's a wooden floor over a crawl space. The house is built on a hill, so only half of it is in the ground; the back half (the flat-roof part) of the house has an above-ground basement, which includes windows and a door to the outside. It's surprisingly bright down there, which is a nice bonus.

It's clear that the previous owners were working on finishing the basement. In fact, they had one bedroom-like room in the cement floor area, and another back under the kitchen (where we now have the pantry shelves). There's a lot of drywall and partition walls already set up. Some are painted, some not. It's in a bizare mid-project kinda stage. It's weird to be down there, realizing we're in the middle of a project that someone else started.

Today's improvements began with some weatherstripping on the door to the outside, which was, as we say, "wicked drafty." I weatherstripped the heck out of it, and now it's far less drafty, which hopefully will help energy efficiency, and also lessen the ever-present, ever-terrifying risk of pipes freezing. Can I tell you how much I fear this happening? I fear it a lot. Those dreams I used to have about the whole house flooding are now replaced with nightmares of the whole house flooding and then freezing, looking something like Superman's fortress of solitude.

I also did a few minor cosmetic things. We have three paintings from Sam Black, also known as "Uncle Sam" to Jake's mom's family (even though he's not actually their uncle, or related to them in any way). Uncle Sam also happens to be the father of Lewis Black, one of our favorite Comedy Central ranters. Just a few degrees of separation. Anyway, we have these three paintings of Uncle Sam's. They were great in our old apartment, which was very mod. But they look seriously out of place in our new Victorian lifestyle. So they were sitting around, making me sad, wondering what to do with incompatible art. Today I put them up on the big orange wall in the basement. I think they look pretty great.



By the way, that orange color was there when we arrived. I doubt we would have chosen it, but it is nice to keep it bright down there.

I also installed a retractable clothesline across the main area of the basement. It's a nifty little mechanism that we got at Target a while ago:


After some general cleaning up, throwing out, and organizing, I think the basement looks better, though it still has a long way to go. I'd like to work on the laundry room, and also get Jake's bike shop organized. But these are probably more likely to happen in the spring or summer. And they're not really pressing issues.

When I'm in the basement, though, I start looking at the walls and the joists and beams and wonder "how the heck does this place stay up?" It's kind of scary, really. But I guess it's still here after a hundred-plus years, and probably isn't going anywhere, right?