Rebuilding/renovating the basement after the flood (still not bike related)

[Sidecar Bob]

This thread is about rebuilding & restoring the basement after the flood and doing a bit of remodelling along the way. If you haven't read the thread about the ice storm, power outage and flood that led to this project it is here
viewtopic.php?p=830354#p830354

At the end of that thread the mould removal crew were taking the basement walls and raised floor apart (I expect them back for at least 3 more days) and I was working on a floor plan for the basement.
I am also researching what to paint the floors with.

I'll repeat The Plan for putting it back together here with a few refinements since I posted the last version on July 15. This is subject to change as things develop and the first change is that instead of painting all of the floors at once I've changed my mind and will paint them one at a time as I go.
- Paint the bathroom floor and put it back together so I can use it while working on the rest of the basement. The toilet flange is set to be even with the raised floor and I don't want to lower it to match the concrete so I will raise the area under the toilet and into the corner (this will make it about the same height as the toilets upstairs).
- The shop will be next. I will put blocks under the workbench legs (I will put blocks under the kitchenette counter's legs at the same time), paint the floor, fix any walls as necessary and generally get it to the point where I can use it while working on the rest of the basement. I'll move things back in as I need them for now with the rest as we move stuff back in generally.
- The pool room was always a few feet to short for the table (you really need 4' clearance all around it) so we have moved it onto the rec room (it will eventually get wheels with locks so that it can live against the wall and be moved to the middle for use). I will move the wall between the former pool room and the model train room so that there will be more space for the railroad I want to eventually build and leave about 125 sq.ft. for a storage room (with shelves).
- With that wall moved I can finish the storage room and build some shelves so we can put some things away in there. I'm planning to turn the former lock shop (little room between the shop and the stairs) into a shop storage space too so I will work on that and the storage room next to it at the same time (this will all become clear when I post the floor plan).
- After that I'll probably paint the rest of the floors (or not) and we can move the stuff back in, piled in the rooms where it belongs where possible and the train room when not so we can get rid of the container and park in the garage. Maybe.
- After that I'll work my way through the basement one room at a time, finishing with the train room.​

In the meantime I will need to deal with the foundation. They found this crack where the worst of the mould was (below the window in the train room). I checked outside and I can see that it goes all the way to the window sill. It would be nice if I could just paint it with Drylok but I have a feeling I'll need to call a foundation guy to fix it from the outside.

Crack below train room window.jpg

They also found this at the east end of the rec room. The sill plate has started to rot so at very least it and the bottoms of some of the studs will need to be replaced. It has been 4 months since the flood so is possible that the rot is due to water that was trapped inside the wall & floor structures but it is at least as likely that there is another leak in that area.
They recommended (& I agree) that I should remove the wood (this 2x3 framing is there to provide space for the insulation so not structural), clean the area well and leave it open as long as possible to watch for leaks.

02 - Rotten wood rec room east.jpg

[Sidecar Bob]

I drew this in 40 pixels = 12" but I had to reduce it to 1 pix = 1" to get it to upload here. I'll post larger excerpts as I work but this will at least give you an idea about what is where. The overall size of the house is 30' x 70' not including the garage and front entry

[Sidecar Bob]

I finally decided to use Sico Latex Floor Paint. It was on sale when we went shopping so we bought 3 gallons (different colours). We also got the new water softener.

The first areas I'm going to tackle are the Bathroom and the Utility room.

Bath & Utility detail.gif

I'm not going to paint the Utility room floor (or walls for that matter) so all I have to do in there is install the water softener.

The bathroom will be more involved:
- They left the floor under the (small) vanity cabinet and under the toilet. I've decided to lower the vanity & sink to sit on the new floor so the raised floor under it has to come out.
- I was planning to leave a portion of the floor under the toilet (this would make it the same height as the ones upstairs plus I won't need to lower the flange) but it would be a lot of work to remove the remains of the sheet vinyl flooring & adhesive, not to mention cutting the floor close to the toilet so the new plan is to remove the toilet, build a new floor for it to sit on and then re-install it after the floor is painted. I think this will be better in the long run.
- The shower stall was installed on the concrete with the raised floor built around it so that you actually stepped down into it. All I will need to do is clean off the old caulking residue and add new moulding around the pan.

This was the bathroom I renovated in 2018 after finding out the hard way that the relative Dad hired to add the shower drain had patched the hole in the concrete with sand mix, which let water through to rot the floor and the vanity. After a plumber came and figured out why the floor was always wet I patched the hole properly with pre-mix and it stayed dry for several months before I replaced the raised floor over it.
When I patched that hole I trowelled it close to level but I didn't worry about making it smooth because it was going to be covered. Since I'm going to paint the floor this time I will need to learn how to make rough concrete smooth. I guess that means more time watching YouTube......

[Track T 2411]

Something like this works well...
https://a.co/d/65njWHN

[Sidecar Bob]

I'm not sure if I'll need to resort to grinding but I'll keep those in mind if I do.
It's mostly dimples so I'm hoping I can just trowel on something like Top' N Bond to level & smooth it.

[Sidecar Bob]

I checked with a straight edge and there was only one small area that was proud so a few seconds with a hammer & chisel dealt with that.

Here's the vanity with the remains of the raised floor under it.

02 - Vanity (old floor).JPG

I decided to use Top'n Bond to smooth the patched area. It looks pretty good so far but it will need a 2nd coat to feather the edges out.
I want to give it a couple of days to cure before I start working on the toilet platform and then I will have to wait a month before I can paint the floor.

03 - Top'n Bond.JPG

Installing the water softener is not going as smoothly as I'd like. I shut off the water and tried to unsolder the adapters from the pipes (joined with copper couplers) but even with the coupler glowing red it wouldn't move. I can cut the pipes above & below the joiners and put them back together with new joiners but that will have to wait until I get to a hardware store.

So with that all on hold I'll move on to the shop

01 - Shop detail.gif

The benches on the west wall. Since I won't be using the bench for garden stuff any time soon I have temporarily relocated the computer to that bench.

02 - West benches (floor not supported).jpg

The benches on the north & east walls. That's the computer from the garage shop sitting on it. It's power supply appears to have died so I guess that's one more thing I'll have to shop for some time soon (I have an old laptop I can put in there for now).

03 - North & east benches (floor not supported).jpg

[Sidecar Bob]

And a few days later they looked like this: All tiles removed and all edges of the old floor trimmed & supported. Everything feels solid again and the garbage can, which sat in the way in front of the power tools bench finally has a proper home (suggested by one of the mould guys).

04 - West benches (floor supported).jpg

05 - North & east benches (floor supported).jpg

Meanwhile the utility room waited patiently

04 - Utility rm empty space.jpg

Until I got the 3/4" couplings And brought 4 bags of softener salt in the sidecar. Now it looks like this

05 - New water softener.jpg

In the meantime I found the contact info for the guy that worked on our foundation in 2016. He looked at the big crack and said it definitely needed to be fixed and all the little cracks and said it would probably be OK to leave them.
Then I decided the squash growing behind the house needed watering with the sprinkler (it was a drought, after all) and the next time I went downstairs there was a puddle in the doll room. I hadn't even noticed that crack, hidden behind one of the 2x3s.
We had 38mm of rain the next day and not a drop made it through any of the cracks but I didn't trust it so today I put the sprinkler near another little crack and this happened.
I'll test more places in the next few days and the foundation guy is going to come and look again......

05 - Leak in office.JPG

[Whiskerfish]

No fun. I miss not having a basement but after digging out the one at the house I grew up in to work on leaks and rebuilding an entire wall on my Uncles (both years back) I miss it a bit less.

[Sidecar Bob]

I watered the walls on Saturday, starting next to that leak where that leak is and moving the sprinkler along every half hour or so.
Then I called the foundation guy again.
This is not going to be cheap but I'd rather spend the money now than find puddles after I replace all the drywall.

And speaking of drywall. I have all I need to replace walls in the shop and bathroom up. I'm not worrying about perfect in the shop (most of it will be behind stuff anyway) and I think the bathroom might only need a light sanding and one more coat.

It is 67%RH down here so I'm giving it a couple of days to dry before I continue. In the meantime I've started removing the ceiling tiles & fluorescent lights in the former pool room in preparation for moving that wall.

[Sidecar Bob]

I will have a helper this weekend so I decided to leave the drywall mud to cure a few more days and start working on yet another area: getting ready to move the wall.
As it is now

01 - Pool room (before).JPG

And as it is going to be

02 - Storage room (after).JPG

I started by removing the old lights (two 4' fluorescents end to end) and about half of the ceiling tiles in the pool room and then removing all of the wiring in the wall

03 - Tiles down, wiring removed.JPG

And then decided I needed to remove the rest of the drywall on one side to get at where the frame is nailed in. If I'd realized that earlier it would have been easier to remove the wiring.

04 - Drywall removed.JPG

As seen from the train room

05 - Train room before.jpg

I need to cut the 1x2s off where the wall is going to go and remove the parts that will eventually go back up in the train room and a few more details like that before help arrives.

[Track T 2411]

Looks like a big project, but you've planned it well. Progress is progress!

[Sidecar Bob]

My help came and we got the wall moved. Either Dad built that wall to be a really tight fit, the upstairs settled a bit in the last 31 years or maybe a bit of both. Anyway I needed to use the 3lb hand sledge to move it and to get it into its new location. I did nail it in place but it probably wasn't necessary

05 - Wall moved (storage room).JPG

And as seen from the train room

02 - Wall moved (train room).jpg

And with drywall. I won't tape it until I can do the whole room and I won't be able to start on exterior walls until the foundation guy has seen the rest of the places that leak.

06 - Drywall on moved wall.JPG

I built the new section of wall between the end of the train room/hallway wall and the wall we moved. The new closet will be an unfinished space so I installed drywall on the train room side (this will be all I do in the train room until I start getting it ready to build the new layout).

03 - Drywall train room-closet wall.jpg

And the new closet. We still haven't decided about a door and I don't have shelves yet but at least it has a light

06 - New closet.JPG

[Sidecar Bob]

The south wall of the shop more or less before (I added a screw to each stud and started to straighten the cut off edge of the drywall before I remembered to take a pic).

06 - South wall (before).jpg

And after I installed new drywall, taped & primed it. And since I was painting in that area I primed the cabinet too.
I also patched & primed the holes in the northwest corner where they opened the walls to look for mould. I am not going to paint the shop walls and I didn't even prime (or tape) under the workbenches.
Yes I know there's a hole next to the door. I'll deal with that when I have an offcut close to the right size.

07 - South wall (after).JPG

The bathroom wall is at the same point but I won't take pics until it is painted.

[Sidecar Bob]

So with everything else on hold I started on a 4th part of the project

01 - Doll room detail.gif

My Mom's main hobby when they moved here was making dolls and teddy bears and this room was originally intended to display her collection, which also included ones from her childhood. When our son moved home a year or so after we inherited it became his bedroom and since he died it became yet another storage area.
Kay has hopes of eventually using the room for the dolls (with her own added in) but our youngest daughter moved home last fall and they have decided it should become her room instead.

Looking west at the built in shelves and artificial fireplace that Dad made this for their old house at least 40 years ago. We were afraid we would lose this but the mould crew found no sign of anything in that end of the house so it survives.
It was covered with very realistic fake bricks but between age and damp from the flood they were in sad shape with many falling off so I removed the rest and I'll replace them with something new before I'm done.

02 - Doll room west (before).jpg

And looking east into the sewing room. I took those ceiling tiles down to run wires when I renovated the kitchen and never got around to putting them back up. In the meantime I have decided I want to add a 2nd frost free hydrant (hose bib) on that end of the house while it is apart so more tiles will come down before they go back up.

03 - Doll room east (before).jpg

The first thing I did was trim the old floor off flush with the cabinet's kick and support the edge with 2x2 (I'll cover the taller kick later).

04 - Support under built in shelves.jpg

And then put up more drywall

05 - Drywall in doll room NE.jpg

In the meantime I painted the bathroom but I won't take pics until I build the new platform for the toilet and paint the floor.

The foundation guy came this morning. He looked everything over and gave me a very fair quote considering how much more work will be involved (including 2 holes that have to be dug by hand). He expects to start in mid October and gave me a short list of things that I need to do before then.
Most of the garden will be harvested by then too.

[Sidecar Bob]

In my Dad's defence he had never done drywall before and 3 decades ago he didn't have YouTube to teach him how. At any rate the job just grew once again.

I've been wondering why some of the joints in the drywall in the hallway have been cracking for a couple of years. Now that the bottom part of the drywall has been removed (& none to gently in some places) the reason has become obvious. Can you see it in this pic?

01 - No tape.jpg

Yep, there's no tape in those joints.
And where the joints do have tape it was embedded so poorly that it can be pulled out as easily as removing masking tape.

02 - Tape peels easily.jpg

What this means to me is that all of the tape had to be removed and the mud has to be removed from every joint so that I can start taping from scratch. And it seems the only way to accomplish that is to scrape the paint off, then use a sponge and hot water to soak & soften the plaster so that it can be scraped off. It isn't that hard to do but I'd prefer to spend my time doing just about anything else.
When it is done the joints look like this.

03 - Mud removed.JPG

So I stopped putting up more drywall until I can strip the joints in the east storage room and the doll room so that they have a chance to dry out a bit before I start taping (& also so I can deal with the tears in the paper from the scraping).
The patch in the bathroom floor has cured enough to paint but I think that is going to wait until I have the east storage room and the doll room taped & mudded.