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.