Hitting area in the basement

Yesterday I put my ideas together for an area of the basement that I wanted to create for my kiddos. This project is actually the one that launched our basement remodel. My younger son and I were in the basement scoping out a place to put a baseball tee. All three of my kids play baseball or softball. It is so important for them to practice hitting off a tee. The more cuts at the baseball they can take, with proper form, the better they can get.

On our basement scouting trip I asked my younger son to hit the basement wall, on our south side, with a hammer. He hit it down low and what I discovered made me rip out the entire wall. I smelled mold and dirt. What I discovered was drywall touching the ground in the basement actually wicked up moisture. Moisture, not from water entering the basement, but just enough moisture from improperly installed insulation. The cold outside covered with insulation made water form. I should say improperly installed. I put foam insulation on the wall to give a barrier between the insulation and the wall. That product didn't exist. Also, I used a water barrier paint on the wall, that too wasn't in existence when the basement was finished years ago. Picking the drywall up off the floor an inch would have done a lot to keep the mold at bay.

I ripped out the entire wall. In the picture below, I installed metal 2 x 4s. My original thinking was to use this product as a way to put up something 'water proof'. On the other ways I used a pressure treated 2 x 4 on the ground and then wood studs. That turned out to be easier, faster and cheaper. The metal studs were easy to cut and put up but they were fairly costly.

In the picture you can see my idea for a hitting area. A ball suspended from a rope. The rope can be adjusted to different heights for my different height children. Against the wall, suspended from the ceiling, is an anti-fatigue mat. When one of them hits the ball, the force of the ball hitting that mat stops the ball. The ball falls back with a lot less power. By suspending the ball from the ceiling, it eliminates the need my kiddos to replace the ball on the tee. They can just take their cuts. We are still working over the design of the entire thing but as is, it works fine. Now we can just improve on it, looks and function. What I like a lot is, I can remove the entire thing in a few minutes. When I add a finished ceiling there, I can get a few extra ceiling tiles to put up when we store this hitting device. Probably over the winter, the kids will use it. During the spring and summer, I'll remove it from the basement. I'll pop out the ceiling tiles with the holes and install the whole ones.

The overall design of this hitting tool was actually created by my grandfather thirty plus years ago. He too thought it was a good idea to get his grandson swinging every day. My grandfather installed mesh between two trees and suspended a ball from the same tree. I sat with him while he made this thing, thinking it would be ready in minutes. After an hour of sitting with him and watching him, I got bored and ran off. When I got home, he was just finishing it. I tried it, over and over. When he left that night, he left watching me hit. I stayed out there until it got dark and then used that hitting thing every day. At eight, you really don't realize anything about time. My grandpa worked on that for around six hours that day. I would do anything to get those five hours near him now.

Drywall in our old living room

Yesterday I began, what for me, is the long process of drywalling the living room. I hate drywall. Not the hanging part so much but the mudding and sanding. I've done it all over my house and experimented with various ways of blocking the dust from leaving the area where I'm working. Nothing has worked very well.

I will tape and mud the joints today. Our goal is to do either a ceiling tile treatment (either tin or fake tin panels) or we might drywall over the existing plaster ceiling. What will not happen? We will not be taking the plaster ceiling down!

Our new fireplace should arrive next Monday which will put the install of the fireplace some time end of next week. After that we can begin building the new fireplace surround. We are still deciding how we want it to look.

Finding Out My House is Swiss Cheese

Yet again I've discovered another hole in the house! This one was big. The entire ceiling over the bay window opened up to the roof over the porch. There was no insulation, no covering at all separating the inside of the roof and our old living room. Standing inside the space under this ceiling you could feel massive amounts of cold air rush into our house.

I attacked this problem two ways. I needed to insulate the upper part of the wall because this wall is the lower part of the walls inside my boys' rooms. Large triangular spots on their walls were never insulated, even with that blown in junk that I filled the walls with a few summers ago.

To insulate the walls in that spot I first installed 2x4s vertically, toenailing them into the porch supports already there. Next I stapled insulation between those new studs. This got really challenging as the angle of the roof behind me pitched. I got poked by the nails of the roof above me. This is my own fault. I had access to this portion of the wall when I put the roof on the porch. At the time, I was so focused on doing the roof that I didn't inspect this area very well. Truthfully, I couldn't see the whole into my living room because of the plaster ceiling. This would have been so easy to do with the roof open!

The next order of business was closing up the opening. To do this I installed 2x6s across the entire span. I created pockets to hold the 2x6 insulation used in attics and on ceilings. This would give a R-19 to that portion rather than the R-13 for a 2x4 wall. The second I covered that with insulation, the draft was gone. Lastly, I covered the entire area with 6 mil plastic. Even though the paper on the insulation is a vapor barrier, there were spots where I filled in the insulation without the paper. Also, I want this buttoned up. I don't ever want to feel the cold sitting in my living room again.

Check out the pictures of the before and after. As crazy as this sounds, the Weekend Woodworker wasn't able to finish this project until Monday night. After working all day, I came home to work on this for the next four hours.

Basement Stairs and Another Wall Insulated

Saturday I worked hard to get another wall in my basement insulated. The trick with this wall, the basement stairs were right against the wall. I thought about this for about two weeks and then made my plan. Everything went just as planned--for once! This project had a massive potential for making big problems at my house. Without the stairs, we can't do laundry. If my wife misses one day without putting in laundry, the basement gets filled up!

To begin, I removed the steps. I used a circular saw to cut each stair down the middle. I then took my hammer and hit each part out of the dado created for each step. There were about five huge nails in each side of the stringers holding each step. Total over kill. I then took off one stringer and slide it out of my way. I cleaned and then painted the wall with a basement waterproofing paint. The wall was in good shape which meant I only had to fill in a few cracks with mortar.

Under our stairs there was a makeshift shelving system. I've always hated it and planned to redo it someday. Someday was Saturday. Discovered the entire stair system was being held up by two 2x4s! We dodged another bullet there. I beefed up the supports under the stairs with 4x4s and a studded wall. The stud wall really gives the entire platform good support now.

The wall was again treated with insulated foam board. This was also put behind the shelves.

The last step was to measure and cut new steps. The new steps were 29 1/2" wide. After a little trouble, I got them all in. I added 2x4 supports under each step to give them more strength. The steps will be carpeted so I used regular 2x10s for the stairs. If we wanted, we could have installed oak stairs but that would have raised the cost, big time. Carpeted stairs are fine for our basement remodel.

Really amazing how much warmer our basement is with these improvements. There are no heat runs in the basement but it is just as warm as the rest of the house.

In one of the pictures below you see all the crap back on the shelving unit. I made the base for two shelves but reused the plywood from the old shelves. I needed to stop the project and needed a place to put all that crap. I will be finishing that shelving area with plywood shelves, a wood panel against the insulation and stud wall at the back and to make the shelves look thicker, false fronts for each shelf.