Basement, part 2

Big huge thanks to my mother-in-law who has agreed to host Thanksgiving this year! Wahoo, we got a reprieve on Project Eat-Off-The-Basement-Floor!

It’s a temporary reprieve… we are still holding our office Christmas party down here next month. So we are still working our butts off to get this thing finished.

Since there were a few parts of the floor that had never been painted, and we were never going to get all the dirt off the floor, we decided to paint the whole dang thing. We moved the freezers away from the wall, scrubbed the entire thing (with a major floor scrubber!), painted where the freezers were supposed to go, and then moved them back.

I couldn’t believe how nasty the floor was – look at the difference under the freezers (fresh paint), the square where the freezers temporarily sat, the the rest of the floor that had been scrubbed! Ick!!

Here’s Farmer Doc hard at work with the industrial-strength floor scrubber.

Seriously gross.

(If I had known we had this thing, I would not have been scrubbing Cinderella-style!)

Just look at all that dirt!

Phew… all mopped up and ready to paint.

The hardest part to paint (and clean!) was under the stairs. I got that job.

But I wasn’t heading under there without my coffee, no way!

Once the entire floor was painted, we wiped all the walls down. (I was amazed at the junk that came off the walls!) There were a few parts where the cinderblock hadn’t been sealed yet. There used to be a big closet in this part, and the old fuse box. And there are a few parts where we took out windows and closed them up. We learned that this basement was built with unsealed concrete blocks, so sealing the inside is really important to keep the water out. We got started on the sealing project last night.

Look how pretty the floor is!

Since we got a temporary reprieve from Project Eat-Off-The-Basement-Floor, we decided to go ahead and paint the walls in this part. Because when your deadline gets pushed back, the first thing you do is make the project bigger. Always.

Clean and shiny floor… walls ready for paint (and a little sealer near the freezers).

It took me forever to get the pipes near the well pump cleaned off. Between the construction mess and “regular” basement dust, they were pretty nasty. But now they are cleaner than ever!

I’ve got to say… it’s a really good thing we have a reprieve on Project Eat-Off-The-Basement-Floor. This is the new basement. Where we are going to have the office Christmas party.

I have been guaranteed that this part will not be as difficult to clean. And that we won’t have to paint. Promised. I intend to hold someone to that promise…

Are your Thanksgiving plans shaping up? Can you believe it’s on THURSDAY?!?