Basement...chapter 1

Good grief...I feel like all my Monday posts are about how the weekend didn't turn out as planned.  Haha!  But yet again...our Saturday did not turn out as planned.

We were soooooooooooooo excited to finish the bed we started in THIS post.  We had big plans.  Get up, get the construction completed, get it painted...yeah.  We were stoked.  Then at 5:00 am something woke me up.

Thunder and what sounded like a hurricane (I swear...it really was that loud) outside our house.

It rained.

Hard.

All day long.

SO!  Since we don't have a workshop to build in and instead have to use our driveway...we were stuck.  I didn't know what we were going to do.

The Hubs decided that it was finally time to paint the cement in the office.  Yay!  I'm really lovin' this project side of my hubby that I haven't really seen before.  It's great!

We cleared the office out.  I swept the nasty floor.

 this is obviously PRE-sweeping...sorry guys.  Know it's gross...

I looked up after I was finished to see The Hubs staring at the gross beadboard on the walls.

"This isn't staying is it?"  He asked.

"Uh heck no."  I replied.

Next thing I know he's ripping it all off.  Honestly...I LOVE this new side of him.  It's so great!  I think some of your projects that he sees are making him a lot more excited about fixing the house up.  SO happy about that!  :)

 also...sorry for the grainy pictures.  the lighting in that room is terrible.

So.  What we found was bad.  As in "I can't believe we've been working in this room all year with what is under that beadboard!" bad.

We have a cement foundation.  Um, that was expected.  No big surprises there.  But then there is a layer of what appears to be some kind of plaster.  And then...old paint.  OLD paint.  As in...most likely lead paint.  SO not good.  As soon as I took the above pics...we both put masks on.  Then we looked like this...

Oh yeah...we're hot.  We know it.

The Hubs was having a flipping awesome time ripping down the beadboard.  He said it was actually very therapeutic somehow.  Maybe the whole ripping something off the studs thing really works for him.  Good thing since we have a LOT of that coming.  Hee hee!

After we got all the beadboard off, the room looked something like this...


Yes...I know.  It's lovely.  Don't worry though...nothing you see is mold.  That was something I was extremely happy about.  There's a lot of discoloration in the foundation...but no mold.  Happy...very very happy.  We are going to put up Drylok to ensure of that.  And we also found out that you can get specific "mold proof" drywall.  Yup...we're going with that.  It's a bit more expensive but worth it in our book.

So the grand "AFTER" picture for the weekend is this...

Lovely isn't it?  I know, I know...you're all swooning.  Bet you all wish you lived here huh?  Sorry guys, but these digs are taken.  :)

We'll be tackling the rest during the week and keeping you posted.  But our questions today are...

#1...got any grand ideas for taking plaster off of cement?

#2...any tips for removing lead paint?  Everything we found was latex paint remover...

Any tips/advice are greatly appreciated!