Welcome To The Grow Room

There is a special little room in my basement, that if you didn't know it was there you might miss it.  When I first saw the house it was being used as a music room, drum set and all.  Although I'm told there is not enough electricity or ventilation to be one, it is now lovingly referred to as the "grow room."  My goal is to take it from a dark, spidery, dead fly room that smells moldy if the door is left shut, to a home office that Fluffy and I can use when all hell breaks loose in the attic during my remodel.  Then after the remodel, when I'm working from upstairs, I want it to be nice enough that guests are not afraid to spend the night in it.  As you will see, the room has some challenges.

The room is about 21' long and 10' wide.  The ceiling is about 7' high.  The furnace return goes across the middle of the ceiling and two lamps hang down that look like boobs.

The view back toward the door shows the one window.

The plastic door is kind of hard to close.  What genius came up with this I do not know.  The plastic wall is interesting and I wonder if the broken fridge that was here when I looked at the house stuck through it.  We will never know.

There is a water closet, although not the type that would be useful if you needed one.  This is where the water service comes into the house and the electrical grounding happens.

The carpet was stained and filthy.  I saw the exact same thing for sale at Lowes and they told me that was one of the cheapest ones they sell.

Thank you to EJ for taking it to the dump!  Dead flies, spiders, and all!

We don't need no stinking support beams.

This is Ned tearing things up so he can check what is holding up my front porch.  He will most likely be my general contractor for the dormer.

This was found behind the wall in the basement closest to my front porch.  Someone wrote it a few weeks before we landed on the moon.

Be careful Tim! Looks like you're next.

I made this to fit under the window.  Fluffy must have her throne!

I took down the plastic door and removed molding in the door jam for my new door.

I swear I measured it several times!  It is hard work to take off 1/4 inch of a 2 x 4 floor to ceiling.

I'm hoping to hide the water line and the electrical grounding wire behind a new soffit.

This outlet is not grounded.  Jon from 3 Dimentional Electric,  will be in to fix that soon.

The house has a trench around the perimeter of the foundation which allows rain water to go to a drain.   I took out a rotten board that was in the trench but there is still a 2x4 behind this paneling is rotten.  I plan to fill the trench with flashing to keep the carpet out of the water and let it drain.

Baseboard

1/4 round was being used in some places near the furnace return.  The other molding was used as crown and vertically in corners.  The blood blister on my hand is from not holding the chisel low enough so that the hammer doesn't hit me.

I cleaned up some of the original door knobs.  They used to be covered in paint like the one on the right.

This is the color I'm using for the door and trim.  I'm including it in my post so that I can find it when I'm at Lowes.

Beautiful!

The plastic wall is replaced with paneling that will be painted.

Lovely!

Flashing for the trench.

This should work until I decide to replace the paneling and the 2 x 4 behind it.  That will come later.

This is Jon from 3 Dimensional Electric putting in my internet line.  He also put in a fan to keep down the humidity and replaced that outlet so that it is safe to use.

Jon also installed several can lights so that Garr won't hit his head.

But now that the old lights are gone I will need to repair the sheet rock.  Two steps forward, one back.

I had to take off the paneling so that the leaky window could be replaced.

What the heck, why not remove all the paneling.  It looks like the framing is in good shape.  And a quick text to Nick, the last renter, to find out that there has never been standing water down here in the last 7 years. Yay!  Sheet rock dust is in my future.

The Fence

It started out innocently enough with me thinking, "I really need a fence."

After getting a couple bids, I decided on A&E Gates to make a tandem automatic gate for me.  That was in December 2017 and they were booking 6 months out.  First I had electricity brought out to where the gate motor would be.  I even had 220 added for when I get an electric car.  What I quickly discovered was that the gate guys don't do the fence, just the gate.  And they don't do the electrical, but the electrical guys don't dig trenches, although I was able to convince mine to, and NOBODY wants to do leveling!

So I ever so carefully leveled it, as requested, to be consistent with the grade of the alley.

Then when my neighbor was having some concrete work done he suggested we extend his little wall to prevent gravel from getting in my track.  Great idea Ed!

The workers did a nice job but they put all my gravel back where it was!  They un-leveled it!  Thankfully my neighbor, Ed, did a fantastic job at re-leveling it for me since I had hand surgery and it was hard enough to do the first time.

Then the guys from A&E Gates came and made way for the track.  I'm not sure our careful leveling really made much of a difference when I saw how much they dug up.

While I was waiting for my beautiful gate to appear I realized that this slab is in horrible shape.  I told them I wanted to get a price on repairs or replacement of it.  Everything went on hold for a little while.

I soon found Robert from TRJ Construction, who had poured my neighbor's slab, to do the work.  And as long as we're replacing the slab, let's put concrete across the whole width of the yard.  And take out those horrible stairs while you're at it.  This is what you call scope creep.

There were four hours of jack hammering just for the stairs plus another few hours for the slab.  Robert promised he would take care of my Peace Rose.

Suddenly it was all level.  And quiet!

Then there was gravel!  This was looking good!

Then there was rebar!  2 x 2 just like I requested!  They all want to sell you 3 x 3 but friends and family said be sure to get 2 x 2 so I did.  Zack and Levon (named after the Elton John song) from A&E Gates and Robert from TRJ Construction got the slab rebar coordinated with the gate rebar.

Then there was cement!

I wanted to draw the Radiohead logo but due to my lack of artistic abilities I went with this.  It's not my best work but any Revolution kite flyer worth their salt will recognize it.

Then the forms came off and the staining began.  The plan is that it will be close to the color of tire marks so that it always looks nice.

This is Robert from TRJ Construction.  He did a great job!

Update: It took over a year from when I ordered it, but my gate finally came and the fence next to it was installed.