8.24.15 update

This past weekend has been more than eventful! To start things off, Saturday my friend Ashley and I went to town painting my basement with waterproofing paint. I painted for about 9 hours straight. It was hands down the best decision I have made for this house. With major rainfall, our basement would be slightly damp for a few days and leave behind stained concrete. I would regularly spray the cinderblocks with bleach, but this was only a temporary fix until the next major rainfall. My waterproofing paint of choice is by Behr. I stuck with one of my usual Behr colors, natural gray. I knew I didn't want stark white, so natural gray was a nice alternative and kept my house looking consistent throughout. I managed to get about 3/4 of my 700 square foot basement painted with a 5 gallon bucket of paint. I purchased a one gallon bucket to finish up with, which I will likely do on Friday evening.

Here you can see the area I was unable to finish.

Here is a few before and afters of a few corners of the basement. You can see the mildew build up.

I really am impressed with the coverage of this paint. My cinderblocks were obviously bare, making them extremely absorbent. I applied the paint with both a roller and large paint brush to get into the mortar lines. You can see cracks in the most left wall that I kept the paint away from until I patch them. I wanted the caulking to have bare cinderblock to adhere to. I will update later about how patching the cracks turned out.

In the meantime, our fabulous 60's plumbing decided to take a crap in our kitchen. So, we called out a plumber who quoted us between $200-$600 to figure out the issue! Thank goodness I trusted my instinct and didn't have him fix anything. I tore apart the bottom of the sink to confirm my theory that the sink wasn't the problem. I was correct. So... I called up my father-in-law and he agreed to come help me find the problem Monday.

Then came Sunday. Brent and I went to a preseason Steelers-Packers game in Pittsburgh (I'm a steelers fan and unfortunately he is a Packers fan...hehe). On the way, we stopped in Canonsburg, PA at my favorite candy store, Sarris. My grandparents used to take me there all the time as a kid. Unfortunately, silly me bought chocolates that would have to sit in a car on an 87 degree day for hours. They didn't survive :(

Then it was off to the game! Such a long, hot day, but the Steelers won!

After the game we went to Hines Ward's (former Steelers player) new restaurant, Table 86. Poor service (it's only been in operation a week or so), but AMAZING food.

And then there was today, Monday.

My father-in-law came up and we spent about 6 hours replumbing our basement drain system to the kitchen. We relocated our washer and dryer to a better (for me) location. This will allow me to designate a specific area to laundry needs, instead of them sitting in the middle of a basement wall in front of gobs of piping/electrical/window. If you look at the first photo in this post, I moved them about 6 feet to the left in front of the painted section of the wall.

My plan is to hang curtains to divide up that space and install a corrugated metal ceiling. I have shelving I am going to install behind the washer and dryer. Some day I will get around to staining the floors, but until then I threw a few excess pieces of carpet down there.

Here is my inspiration laundry area.

Stay tuned for updates as this project progresses!