Demolition: things must get worse before they can get better
What more could a boardgamer family want than a clean, bright space dedicated to their hobby with minimal spider interference? Earlier this year we finally made the commitment – we’re going to renovate our basement.
First, a bit of background. We bought our house three years ago for its character, charm, and “potential”. In our case, “potential” meant a “finished” basement with plywood walls and a falling-down drop ceiling, that on more than one occasion rained insects onto our game table mid-play. So we thought, how perfect! Someday in the distant future, we can renovate but for now it’s totally livable!
That didn’t last too long.
As we should have known from a long history of obsessively consuming HGTV programming, the trick to old houses (ours was built in 1950) is that there are always hidden issues. This is especially true if the old house has a history of DIYers that are less skilled than they thought. Turns out, some previous homeowner’s solution of putting up temporary walls and laying carpeting does not, in fact, stop the flooding issues in a basement and is a pretty shady thing to do.
After a couple rainy days last year, our icky carpet downstairs was even ickier, making what was a usable (if VERY ugly) space not so usable anymore. Then it turns out, asbestos is everywhere in a 1950s house, and it’s very easy to cover up asbestos tiles so that no one knows about them until the carpet is removed.
A few expensive decisions later, our plywood-walled, asbestos tiled basement is stripped back to the cinderblock, revealing decades of water damage, mold, spiders, more spiders, and a beer poster.
So we think, no problem! We don’t really need our basement right now, so we’ll keep it as a scary dungeon for a year or two until we can figure out what to do. We can always play games on our kitchen table (HAH!). Maybe we’ll even do all the reno ourselves (if we’re OK with completing it by 2030). It’s a blank canvas for us to someday throw some money at!
Cue the pandemic, and suddenly our little family of 4 humans and 4 animals is spending all day every day on a single floor of our tiny 1950s house. We’re stepping on tiny plastic dinosaurs. We’re tripping over dogs, cats, and tiny humans. We’re using the high chair next to our tiny kitchen table as extra surface area for game components.
We miss our space. We miss our beautiful game table. And most importantly, we miss being able to talk at normal volumes after the kids go to bed.
So step 1: Demo is basically complete
Step 2: make sure the “ick” factor doesn’t mean we’re doing this again next year when it rains. We had drain tile and a sump pump installed, and after a few heavy rains can confidently say our basement no longer actively oozes (we also got rid of the mold, in case you were worried about that).
Step 3: Let there be LIGHT. We (read: professionals) put in an egress window that immediately changed the feel of the basement. All the insulation covering the other windows is being removed, and block windows put in. It has already changed our lives and we have barely started. This is like that time we added a door leading to our backyard and suddenly we no longer had to put the dogs on leashes to take them to go potty in the middle of winter. It’s been 2 years and we still talk about how great that door is. Peak adulthood is being inordinately pleased about home improvement.
Coming next: We have plans, y’all! Big plans! Literal plans, like we have blueprints and people who know what they’re doing kind of plans. People who have looked at the existing electrical wiring and plumbing in our basement and said “huh, that’s technically legal” (that’s an exact quote).
Fun fact: The technically legal (probably safe?) electrical will take 3 days to demo. For reference, in a typical project in a similar scope electrical demo should only take 1 day or so.
In a few short months, our basement is going to be a gaming and entertaining paradise – complete with a game table, game storage, a bathroom (gasp!), a bar and kitchenette area (fancy!), and a lounge area.
Make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter where we’ll be posting smaller updates in between more in-depth posts here. But also still check back here from time to time for the witty humor that accompanies coping with a significant financial investment during a global pandemic.