Sunday, September 21, 2014

The Basement: Calling in the Professionals

Hi All.  I know you've been on the edge of your seats for the last week, and I apologize.  My excuses are the usual: life, school, work, blah blah blah, but this week I'm throwing in my first round of tests (3 in one week) and a dogburt with an ear infection (don't worry, she's feeling much better now).



We last left off with our basement looking like this.


Actually, that's I lie.  I just realized I never posted that here... Tim put it on Facebook.  This is Tim scooping the last scoop of dirt from our floor in order to level it.  I would like to point out the lack of stairs (don't worry, I let down a ladder for him, he's not cemented down there).  Also worth noting, I think this picture was taking at about 11 on Monday night.  Great way to start the week.

Midwest Basement Systems arrived Tuesday morning to find our basement looking like this.





When they left Tuesday evening, things looked like this:




What they had done was put a trench (kind of looks like a tray or gutter) all along the exterior walls.  They also applied a moisture-proof cover to the walls that ties into the trenching to help with drainage.  The trenching all leads to a sump pump, which will pump water out as needed.


The cement guys weren't available until Thursday (they were contracted by Midwest Basement... we didn't have to line them up ourselves).  It was kind of fun to watch them get the cement into the basement.  


They brought this truck that pumps the cement through a long hose.  As you can see, the hose had to go all the way over our tree-- it was higher than our house!




When they finished, things were looking MUCH better.


Someone asked if we put our hand prints in the concrete.  No, we didn't.  We didn't even thing about it, actually.  I would have hated to mess up that nice shiny surface anyway.

On Friday Midwest basement came back and installed the sump pump and finished things up.  

Right now we still don't have stairs, and have no motivation to build them either.  Now that we're over this hurdle, we'll take our time starting to finish the basement.

No comments:

Post a Comment