Flooding Update: Basement Bar Progress

We discovered that the reason for the additional flooding in our basement is that the line from the drain tile at the exterior of our foundation was clogged, rather than draining as it should. While we have had trouble snaking it out, the good news is that we don't have to dig up our yarn to install one or break up the slab to install a sump pump.

It's finally time for me to start sharing some progress in the basement. Scott's work has finally eased up, so he doesn't have to be working every weekend anymore, and we can finally get work done on all of the things I can't do by myself. It really stinks, but I can't do all kinds of things by myself, without someone holding up the other end, etc., but Scott is able to do all of those things by himself. Makes me feel pretty useless. At least once we get the new drywall up, I can do all the mudding, taping and painting, as well as the finishing work on the cabinets.

Here's what he's done so far, with minimal help from me.



He built a stud wall to support the long side of the bar.



One of his coworkers generously gave us some used cabinets that he had sitting around in his garage, and I designed the new layout using a selection of these cabinets. We carried the cabinets down to the basement, and laid out the short side of the bar so that Scott could see exactly where the supporting stud-wall would go for that side. He hadn't looked at my drawing or dimension for the long side before installing the base plate, but that ended up working out ok because he put in an additional support wing wall between where he had ended it and where the other half wall will go.



One unusual feature of our plan is that we are using former upper cabinets under the bar as storage for glassware. We have built up underneath them so that they have the same size toe kick as the other cabinets, and we will be building up on top of them so that they will help support the bar at standard bar height of 42". Yes, the upper cabinets are shallower than standard base cabinets, but I think they will be extremely useful, without intruding too far into the space on the other side. Plus, it's certainly better than the complete lack of cabinets we had on that side before. There will be two large upper cabinets with a shelf between.

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Flooding Update: More Flooding

We had a fair amount of rain yesterday -- nowhere near as much as last year -- but when I went into the basement, I found two large puddles spreading across the floor. It turns out that the water table has risen so much that it was seeping through the slab. The biggest good news was that it wasn't sewage. The rest of the good news is that it didn't get deep enough to cause any damage, and thanks to the wet-dry shop vac that Scott bought after last time, we were able to get things dry in about two hours fromt eh time I first noticed the leak. Still, this means that we have to dig a pit and install a sump pump to prevent this from happening in the future before we can finish the basement. (The picture above shows the floor still damp, after the water was removed.) Another setback, just wen it seemed that we were finally moving forward.

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Flooding: Update 10 - Bar Demolition

The other thing that happened this past week and weekend was that we hired a dumpster and threw out almost everything from the old bar into it, including huge, heavy pieces of tiled countertop. Once we had the cabinets out, we pulled out the damaged wall behind them as well.



Lo and behold, a lot of the construction behind there was crazy, and I'm not just talking about the layers of dryer lint covering everything. I did remove most of that before these photos were taken. The water and gas pipes weren't properly secured. The wiring was a rat's nest, and we already learned earlier in this process that some lights are actually on two breakers.



Finally, the dryer vent was not only held up with duct tape wrapped around the studs, but also insulated with what looks like fiberfill. Not only does a dryer vent not need to be insulated, but it's not a good idea to insulate a hot duct with flammable material. Finally, the ceiling and wal had been cut out to accomodate and expose all of this unnecessary insulation, and the wall had been "patched" with a ceiling tile. Classy.

Having this wall open should give us the opportunity to fix the wiring and other craziness, so we know it's built right before we close it up and finish it off.

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Flooding: Update 9 - Bar Demolition

As I mentioned in my last flooding update, we were forced to demolish the bar in the basement. Scott has worked very hard on the demolition.



Taking down the tiled bar top was especially difficult.



It was made by screwing down through particle board that was also liquid nailed to the structure. Then the tiles were mortared directly to the particle board. Although particle board is not a proper substrate for tile, the mortar hung tight onto it, and there was no way to unscrew it from below. (Particle board should not be used because if it gets wet somehow -- through cracks, steam from a dishwasher, or some other water from below -- it will swell and the tile will be destroyed. A better way is to mount cement backer board on top of plywood for strength. Materials that have different expansion rates should not be affixed to each other in a way that will not allow for expansion, or there will eventually be cracking and breakage.) There was a lot of hard chiseling necessary to remove the tiles and uncover the screws. Eventually, Scott was able to rip out the remaining screws.



On Friday, a couple of friends helped Scott haul the refrigerator to the curb. Only the counter and cabinet at the sink and dishwasher remains.

Remember, this is what it looked like before:



I think it will be even better when we're done. We'll be bringing back the wood paneling, but adding more storage, and more style.

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Flooding: Update 8 - One step forward, two steps back

This week, we finished the new walls in our basement and I finished painting the walls.

Above, you can see the new entrance to our storage room, which will have double bi-fold doors.



This is the new linen closet located where the old door to the storage area used to be. I've painted it the same dark color as the lower part of the wall, and I think it will be lovely once we put the white shelves in. Of course, it will get a door, too.



I finished the paint all around both main the room and the hallways. We thought that meant that all we have left is staining the bar, installing the floor, the moldings, and the doors.

The first problem arose when we went to double-check that no flood water seeped into the bar. We planned to pull the back off and deal with it from there, but what we found made that impossible.



It was impossible to simply pull the oak veneer plywood off the back of the bar. We found that the bar had been constructed by liquid-nailing the oak plywood to particle board. We couldn't simply remove it without destroying it. Additionally, the particle board had soaked up the water, and on the back side, the particle board had been applied over a layer of drywall, which had also been soaked.



That meant we have to rip our the entire thing, including the cabinets and back wall.



The only thing we might be able to salvage is the upper counter.

The second bad news had no photo associated with it, but it may be more dire. On Wednesday, I found small puddle on the floor of the storage room. We believe that the rain seeped through the cinderblock exterior wall. That may mean that we need to excavate and waterproof from the outside. Certainly, some water has been getting in without our knowledge, since the bottom shelf of our new shelving unit in that corner was already mildewy, after only a few months of owning it.

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Flooding: Update 8

Now that we've gotten back to working on the basement rater than Dragon*Con costumes, we've made a considerable amount of progress that I want to share with you.



Scott has framed out the new opening to the storage room. We are relocating the door, and the new space will have a pair of bifold doors that will allow us to get things in and out easily. In the hallway where the door used to be, we will be adding a wall and closing off part of the hallway as a linen closet.



Meanwhile, I have taped and mudded the new drywall.



I also primed the whole space, including the gyp board ceiling. Although the ceiling was already white, there were many cracks and nicks that I had to repair, so I just primed the whole thing. Additionally, I'm pretty sure it was never painted originally, and there was even overspray on the soffit above the fireplace from when they painted the brick.



Here, you can see the samples I brought home in the process of narrowing down the paint color selection. We chose the scheme on the left. It's a bit dark, but not terribly so, and I think that the ultimate result will be similar in feel to this inspiration photo:


Image on Frog Hill Designs, found via Pinterest.

Here's another inspiration photo showing a bit of the two-tone effect:

Image from amazing bespoke cabinetry company Plain English Designs.

At least for now, you can see a number of things I was thinking about color-wise on a Pinterest board I created for the purpose.



Today, I painted the first coat of the lighter color over almost all of the finished walls. You can see it starting to come together.

What I don't understand is how working for much longer and getting much more painting done was nowhere near as exhausting as yesterday's ceiling painting. Holding things over my head is just not my strong suit.

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Flooding: Update 7

Our progress in the basement was delayed when we started working on costumes for Dragon*Con, such as what we did with the fiberglass.

In the main area of the basement, we have trimmed all of the drywall at approximately chair-rail height (33"). On Saturday, we finally got the chance to pick up drywall, thanks to Scott's dad. We cut each 8' sheet into thirds (32") and installed it below the remaining existing drywall. We will cover the gaps with chair-rail and baseboard molding. We decided to use greenboard, which is water and mold resistant (and paperless wasn't available in the retail store) just in case something happens again, if it isn't there long, we might be able to just scrub it down. Worst case, we remove the chair rail, rip it out, and replace it easily easily.



We installed one long wall of drywall on Saturday, which I have taped and mudded since.



Sunday, we took a break and went to Detroit Fanfare and got some crazy deals on comics. I then headed to the Detroit Zymology Guild to can tomatoes (and drink Bloody Marys made from the fresh tomato juice). After that I got to have dinner with Gerite, fabulous blogger of New Blog for Better Sewing fame, at Toasted Oak.

More work to do this weekend.

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Flooding: Update 6

I am so sick of this basement store room floor. The grey layer didn't come up with paint stripper. It turned into a slick, goopy mess that you could skate around on in rubber boots like an ice rink. The skating certainly didn't help the attempt to scrape the goop up. I ended up having to scrub it up on my hands and knees.

Then, there was just a layer of black left on the floor, you can see it in the corner of the photo above. I thought it was paint, but once I tried to strip it, it turned to goo, just like the previous layer. I wish I had tried just stripping a patch. The paint stripper bottle recommends to try a patch first to see how long you will need to wait, but I think it's a good idea to try just to make sure you're stripping something that won't turn to goo, before you have to scrub it from the enture floor. And also before you waste a nearly $30 bottle of paint stripper.

Once I realized that the black was adhesive, I tried a different tactic that a friend had suggested: mineral spirits. We didn't have a lot on hand, but I was able to mop the small amount over the entire floor. We were able to scrub it clean in one spot, but it was a lot of work, and the fumes were intense. Scott suggested that we let it sit for a while before scrubbing, to let it work. That seemed like a good idea at the time, especially since he felt like he was about to pass out (he had given me the really nice mask). Unfortunately, we didn't return in the right amount of time. It only occurred to me later that he and I were thinking of mineral spirits differently, because he had only used it in high concentrations: dropping a painted item in a jar for a while to strip it. He didn't realize that if we left it too long, it would evaporate and the paint or adhesive would simply dry again. He had never used it as a paint thinner. I wasn't quite thinking of it myself. Given how it had effected us earlier, we avoided going back to it until it was too late. The scrubbing didn't work so well when we tried it again. That night, the fumes pervaded the house, and I could smell it in our bedroom. Under the influence of mineral spirits, we both had terrible dreams and woke up feeling awful.

The final result was more like it was in the beginning, before applying paint stripper. Not wanting to deal with mineral spirits again -- it was not worth the price of the dreams alone -- I decided to simply mop up all of the chemicals before painting. After hours of mopping and many buckets of water, I finally reached clear water, then started it all over, adding TSP cleaner. Eventually, it was ready to paint.



I had bought the darkest pre-mixed color of epoxy paint available. I was thinking of going back to the store and exchanging it for a mixed color I wanted more, but in the end, my impatience to finish the room -- and the fact that it's just a storage room -- won out. I am so ready to start moving things into the storage room, to clear out the rest of the basement so that we can start working on it, and clear out the stuff from the rooms upstairs where it is currently stashed.

We'll be able to start moving things in just a few hours, as soon as the last corners are dry.

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Flooding: Update 5

Since the last post, I have painted and waterproofed the cinderblock with the Drylok.

The next thing to do was to take care of the floor. At first, we thought we could just paint over it. Then, as I was sweeping up, starting to clean the floor again before painting, I realized that the paint was peeling up in places, and in fact there were places where I could literally peel it up with my hands. Since then, Scott and I have been working on stripping the floor. We're on the third coat of concrete and masonry stripper. I tried to apply the first coat with a squeegee, which was a mistake, because it was so uneven. The second coat was more effective overall. We've gotten through carpet adhesive and several coats of paint. I hope to get down to clean concrete tomorrow.

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Flooding: Update 4

And it's tink, tink, tink, tink; tink, tink, tink. Hi-ho, hi-ho!

I think that chiseling away at CMU walls for the past three days has perhaps driven me slightly crazy. Ok, maybe the "slightly" part is me just being charitable.

We may have officially moved past the "cleanup and remediation phase of our basement work and into the "renovation" phase, since we are now dealing with fixing issues that have nothing to do with our sewage backup. As anyone in the building industry knows, you will always encounter more things to fix than you are aware of at the beginning of the project. In this case, it was cracking in the cinderblock walls.

We bought some quick setting patch compound. This compound required that we chisel out the cracks to prepare for for using the compound. The shape required is sort of like a dovetail so that the compound will have more adhesion. The problem with this is that it's very hard to chisel out a shape like that with an overhang, without breaking the overhang off accidentally. I did my best to at least keep an overhang on one side. The spot where Scott was chiseling turned out to be the worst. There was just a thin veneer of mortar, with a huge cavity beyond.



Next, it was time to fill everything with the patch mortar.





We have opened up the storage room and made it much more useable. Scott also installed electrical in the room and two new lights.



As you can see, it's quite open now.

As soon as the patching was finished today, I started resealing the walls with Drylok where the patch was already dry from yesterday. The gallon did not go anywhere near as far as paint would because it is so thick and the walls are so uneven. Every mortar joint had to be painted with a brush. That gallon is gone now, and I will have to head back to the store tomorrow. Hopefully, we'll be ready to move stuff in there in a few days' time.

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Flooding: Update 3

We made significant progress since my last update on Saturday. Specifically, once we removed the sopping wet drywall, we finally felt comfortable taking a little bit of a break. At first, the break consisted of cleaning up the main living areas of our house. We shampooed the carpet and mopped the floor upstairs, because we knew we weren't going to be bringing up sopping wet nastiness anymore, and we were finally able to return the wet vac. Sunday evening, we were able to take time to go to World Steam Expo, where my friends and former roommates The Extraordinary Contraptions were performing. I was happy to get a chance to hang out with them, as it was the first time I saw them since the move. We got there pretty late, so the dealer's room was closed, and unfortunately the schedule was off, and the service at the bar was slow, so our dinner interfered with me being able to attend the whole of the Sunday Driver show. We did see Abney Park and the exhibit from the Charles River Museum. I enjoyed this show more than some of the previous shows, because I like the direction that Abney Park is going with adding old-timey brass to their sound and the harmonies from Jody. We also attended on Monday afternoon, so we could pick up some professional photography prints made of us the year before, and see the Contraptions show. Kevin had to leave early, so we didn't see him at all, and Scott form Frenchie and The Punk took over drums, which was kind of fun. There were a lot of cool stuff in the dealer's room -- much more tempting than last year -- but given out recent disaster, we limited ourselves to some candy. I tried horehound for the first time, and thought it was tasty, kind of like black licorice. Monday evening, we hosted our friends for a cookout, but thankfully they had been able to arrange another place to stay, since the spare bedrooms are full of undamaged things from the basement.

Yesterday, I worked on clearing things out more, since I had to be upstairs most of the afternoon to wait for the DTE guy to arrive and change out our gas meter. The change had nothing to do with the flood, we were simply on their schedule, since our meter was about thirty years old. When relighting out pilot lights, he reassured me that our furnace was fine after the flood, and he taught me how to remove and clean some parts of the old stove in the basement to insure that the pilot lights would remain lit, and the burners would light properly. Once he left, I got out the hip waders and went into the shower with a gallon of bleach and a tub of things to scrub. We're getting close to having sanitized everything now.

The other thing we have been working on is removing the built-in entertainment center that used to occupy the area of our basement pictured above. Not only was it hit with the flood waters, but the way it was constructed also made the back storage room generally inefficiently shaped for storage. It is easy for us to open up this area, because the ground floor of our house is supported by a steel beam and posts. We don't have to worry about load bearing walls, just the posts and the masonry at the fireplace. This entertainment center was installed rather oddly, but the worst part was how they rerouted the duct work that goes to the vent in our entryway. This flexible duct went from the top of the main duct and wraps under the duct and the beam, where it was supported by packing tape, up to where it was shoved over the plywood entertainment center, and generally jammed against the duct in the wall leading to the vent, which it did not fit. Scott will redesign it so that it fits properly. After all, for those of you who don't know, he's a mechanical engineer, and he designs these sorts of systems in schools and hospitals for a living. The other poorly done thing in that storage room i the lighting. We have an 8' light hanging down into head-banging range (for Scott's dad, at least), and it has to be plugged into an extension chord to another room in order to turn it on. We will install it higher up, add more lighting to the other side of the room, add electrical outlets, and a switch.

Our plan now is to clear out and sanitize the storage room first, since it will not need a new floor or drywall. Then, we will move everything into that area while we repair the rest of the basement. We will add a wall and a door to the storage room near where the entertainment center was, closing this area off and protecting it from sawdust. The area near the fireplace will become the shop. We will put up a temporary partition to protect the rest of the basement from the sawdust, and we will work on our repairs there. We plan to use green board to replace the damaged drywall, so that it will stand up better in any possible future incident. With a chair rail between the green board and the existing drywall above, emergency demolition would be simple. I would like to use paperless drywall, which is entirely impervious to mold, but it's not available at Home Depot, and I don't know if there are any other retail places where we cold get it. We will put down a water resistant, moppable floor as well -- probably sheet vinyl, due once again to availability. We are also discussing installing backflow check valves at the floor drains, and we have to repair the cleanout, which was improperly installed, leading to the overflow in that area. If we install the backflow check valves, we will have to rip out the tile in the bathroom, which is a huge additional level of expense and effort, but it would prevent the sewer main from ever backing up into our house in the future. This choice will be at least partly dependent on hearing back from the city and the insurance company.

Priority tasks:

1. Remove built-in entertainment center and extra wall in storage room. Mostly done.
2. Remove any remaining destroyed stuff or things we decide can't be salvaged after all. In progress
3. Remove unaffected keeper items so cabinets and shelving can be easily moved. Mostly done.
4. Bleach clean items to save. In progress
5. Install permanent lighting in storage room. Supplies purchased.

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Flooding: Update 2

We have gotten a lot of help from Scott's parents and his cousin, and a huge amount of progress has been made. We have ripped up all of the carpet, and torn out the gyp board along the exterior walls of the main room. The picture above shows how soaked the insulation was before we removed it. It's out now on all of those walls, and we just have interior walls and the exterior walls at the bathroom and laundry room left to go. We have bleach mopped a lot of the concrete slab, but there is still plenty of bleaching left to go.

The good news is that since what we have is a sewage backup, the insurance company will treat it differently from a flood. Still no word on what, if anything, they will cover.

Priority tasks for today:

1. Remove lower drywall and wet portions of insulation.
2. Remove any remaining destroyed stuff or things we decide can't be salvaged after all.
3. Remove unaffected keeper items so cabinets and shelving can be moved. Mostly done.
4. Bleach clean items to save.

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Flooding: Update 1

We have accomplished a lot since the drain line cleared out yesterday, but it takes a really long time to get things done. I think I spent about six hours with the wet-vac, just to go over the carpet once, suck up the water and get it to a state resembling dry. We also filled an entire box full of garbage bags and Scott hauled them and some ruined furniture to the street. Once the carpet was pretty much dry, it was already past the time Scott had planned to stop, and we called it a night.

Priority tasks for today:
1. Get water heater working
2. Remove couch and other remaining destroyed stuff (mostly Scott's terrain boards for miniatures gaming)
3. Remove unaffected keeper items so cabinets and shelving can be moved. In progress.
4. Get washer and dryer working and begin sanitizing clothes that got caught in the flood. (Yay, sanitary setting on washer! Also, we're pretty sure the washer and dryer still work, I just want to thoroughly clean/inspect them before turning them on.)
5. Remove baseboard. In progress.
6. Remove lower drywall or at least cut vent holes. In progress.
7. Remove water from floor for a second time.
8. Shampoo carpet. (Even if it can't be saved, we'll shampoo it once before ripping it out and getting in close contact with it. There is no padding, so it might be salvageable -- with at least three shampooings.) Carpet removal in progress.
9. Bleach clean items to save.

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Flooding

This week's Cocktail Wednesday was superseded by a small disaster at our house. There has been a lot of rain recently, and yesterday, it rained hard for several hours. Early in the afternoon, the water began backing up into our house.



First, Scott rented a power auger to clear the drain out. Then, we called a plumber, who had an auger with a larger cutting head. We definitely cleared the line out all the way to the city main. Then, we found out that four other houses on our street are flooded. Finally, we found a sewer manhole, where we could see that the line was full to overflowing. It turns out that the main city line was blocked up, and it backed up into our basement and our neighbors' basements. At the highest point, we had about 5" of mixed storm and sewer water that had welled up into our basement. Yuck.

We spent the night at Scott's parent's house. It was a bit of an adventure for the dog, who was so unsure at first about staying there that we accidentally pulled his collar over his head as we tried to get him into the house. Then in the morning, he wanted to explore the unfenced yard, bolting around until Scott got him back on the leash.

When we got home this morning, there was about an inch of water on the floor. I went to the store on a search for rubber boots while Scott returned the auger. After the army-navy surplus, the Target, and the garden center, I found something in Scott's size at Sports Authority. I ended up with a pair of hip waders, myself. Finally, around 11:00 a.m., while we went for a walk to find out where the city was working on line, they cleared the blockage down the line and the basement drained until the water was in the low spot, sadly far from the drains.

Since then, we've been cleaning up and throwing things away. Now, it's break time. Probably time to get back to work, though.

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