The Basement: Before

Warning: it's a mess. It's actually a bit worse than these photos indicate. These were taken in November. You'll have to click on the images if you want to see them in any detail. But it's OK if you don't!

First, a rough floor plan, just to give you an idea of the areas involved. The circled letter and arrows indicate roughly where I was standing and what I was looking at when I took the pictures.

The square shaded blocks are the support columns for the house. The only phone jack is on the right pillar--so those cords in the picture below are snaking through to the upstairs.
The first views are G, D. (I tried putting the two photos together to make one of those choppy panoramas). This is what greets you at the bottom of the stairs:


View E is "the wall of shelves" where everything ought to be. I'd love to paint these shelves someday. Poopy brown is a hard colour to deal with in the semi-dark. Those "x's" are floor trusses.

Directly behind you (so the wall of shelves is on your right instead of your left) is the furnace, water heater and exercise bench. It isn't used much, but the husband won't part with it. (PS. that black line? That's the kitchen drain pipe, re-routed by my husband and a plumber friend of his when the pipes in the floor gave up and died.)



If you turn right when you get to the bottom of the stairs, you enter the laundry room/pantry/recycling area and permanent out-box (under the table used for folding the laundry).
It was a little tidier when I took these photos. (Views A, C and B.)

In the bottom photo, the white thing is the sewer stack. The grey thing is the ducting for the dryer vent. (See the grey thing sticking out of the wall to the right of the dryer vent? Those are old sealed off drain pipes. Apparently the thing to do when the house was built was direct all the downspouts into the basement. I have no idea why anyone would think this a good idea.) The main water intake/shut off valve for the house is here too.

Behind the wall where the freezer is, (and to the right of the area at the bottom of the stairs) is the husband's workshop. (View H). As I mentioned, I'm not going in there. The wood you see in the picture are the thin panels we bought to finish recovering the face of our faux fireplace. (That has yet to be done). The cabinet with the "graffiti" is the chemical cabinet. You will notice, if you look closely, that my kids got hold of a magic marker and drew all over everything one afternoon. I've not been able to get it off my washer and dryer. (And I've decided I sort of like them.)

These are posted, only so that when I am done, you'll know how far I've come!