Technically, this isn’t part of our house project at all. It was never in the scope of the project, and our contractors aren’t doing any of it; it just happens to be occurring at the same time as our house project. (Or at least some of it.)
The short story is that most of the basement floor is crumbling concrete and needs to be fixed.
The longer story is that our cats (who have since passed away) began using the worst parts as a cat box (eeeeww) and I told Andrew in no uncertain terms that there would be no more cats until it was fixed. (Silly me; I thought the cat-lover I married would hop to it and fix the basement floor. I was actually SHOCKED he did nothing about it.)
Like I said before, the basement floor repair isn’t part of our house project, and the quote we got to do it was way too high. Andrew’s friend, Marco, has a business in concrete, and offered to help him with the first step of the repair. Here are some pictures of the basement floor after we removed the yucky industrial carpeting that was covering most it for the last 10+ years:
Below is a photo of what we refer to as the ‘middle’ of the main level.
Our basement has some distinct sections, including: ‘the base of the stairs’ (photo above), ‘middle’ (photo below), ‘work area’ (where the utility sink is, below), the ‘step-down room’ (beyond and to the left of the work area, situated about 24″ below this level, it has a new foundation so the concrete there is fine) and the ‘back storage room’ which is a smaller room off the step-down room with some shelves and a door).
You can see the concrete is the worst in the photo above.
Below here, at the base of the furnace, there is almost no concrete! Hence, the temptation for cats to use it as a cat box…
Here is a photo of the middle section of the basement floor after Andrew and Marco worked on it:
You can see how deep those divots got after they took the tool to the floor! I swear, someone is going to sprain an ankle down there! Nor can I move anything (shelves, holiday decorations, fridge, freezer, etc) back to where they belong at the base of the stairs until we finish this floor.
So, I anxiously await the chance for us to fix it, but life keeps happening so fast around here… This is, admittedly, a back-burner project compared to some of the other things going on!
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