2nd house Updates! Basement & outdoor projects

Basement, turned from gross to not so bad at all.

As fun as it sounds to berm soil up against the house, it really helped to keep some cracks from furthering in our basement.  This picture was taken just after we moved in last July:

The cracking on the left wall can be somewhat seen from this distance

Then Gabe power washed the walls:

He then removed the shelves that must have been there for decades...Although they are nice to have, we really need to treat the wall behind them to make sure we get rid of any mold.  We plan to put back up some configuration of the shelves again, but that is another project for another time.

Gabe worked to fill the cracks in with grout before we could paint with the sealer.

Here is the wall painted with Drylock, a paint that seals the wall from water seepage:

Looks worlds better!!!

before paint

after paint

We bought the house with this old wood stove downstairs in the basement too, but don't envision us taking the time to restore it with tlc at this point, so Gabe listed it on craigslist and we got $120 for it.

Bye bye stove!

I am glad to have the space freed up for our future plans to add living space down there!

You can see that I was in the process of painting the basement door at the time as well:

Ok, so here is the before:

And now the after:

It's a dark pewter green/gray color and probably too green/not enough gray for what I was looking for, but I'm not changing it now!  Gabe was happy--it's nearly his MSU green color (by accident on my part!) :D

In the same way that the doors were that maroon color, so were the shutters.  I didn't like how the color went with the brick, so I decided black was a better choice.  Here are a few shots of the difference:

you can barely see the maroon

better detail shot, with Gabe patching the roofing around the vent piping

New black shutters:

detail shot

Gabe found a basketball hoop on craigslist for $140 and installed it before wintertime.  Still has yet to use it!  Here's hoping for a chance to in the spring :)

Another small project Gabe undertook recently when his folks were in town: to remove the already falling over tree before everything greens up and it gets harder because of the undergrowth.  The ground was frozen so tire tracks didn't affect the yard too much but didn't hinder the ease of removal (the roots were mostly exposed anyways!):

I think Gabe liked this project :D

Yesterday, Gabe finished his pallet shelves project.  I'm pretty proud of this one!  He got some pallets from a local hardware store (free) and went to town fabricating them.  He cut them down to size, using our large gray bins as the template for height.  He used the main supports for the slats to make the legs for the shelves.  We will be able to store 18 large bins with this arrangement!  Go Gabe and your amazing skill!

Presenting:

Now, here is a glimpse of our next "big" project in the basement, here is how the stairs are currently oriented coming down into the space:

Well, we plan on putting a landing three treads up and making a 90 degree angle towards the door to create something of a vestibule.  As you can see the pole is rather close to the stairs headed towards the door, so having the stairs facing the entry would be more ideal.  This way, we can wall off a space lining up with the HVAC duct pictured and have more space doing so.  Here's our latest idea of the space plan: