Getting Started

So it seems that this is my latest distraction. Blogging. What am I distracting myself from? Well, what do MOST of us distract ourselves from? Something boring, something unpleasant, something that they don't want to do. Yup, me too!

I am distracting myself from the Vortex, the moldy pit of a house that I seem to have acquired. Now mind you, I totally wanted this house, I had been looking for months for a house to purchase, and I don't actually regret it. But it is more than I anticipated, work wise. I am overwhelmed at times. I am stymied at times. Sometimes I don't know where to begin. Hence the need for distraction.

It's moldy. The mold must be dealt with before I can do any of the fun things, like paint some nice faux finished walls, refinish wood floors, put in a new kitchen. First I had to clean out the basement, uncover the "sealed off" part, haul out the half century of accumulated moldy trash, all while garbed in face mask, goggles, overalls, boots, gloves and shower cap. Up and down the stairs I would go, sweating like a pig, pouring the condensation out of the goggles, and having to stop within an hour or so. Progress has been slow.

Lately I have been refilling the crawl space part of the basement back up with soil. That is a majority of the problem, the fact that the original basement was altered. Some previous owner started digging it out, dug below the footings, the water table is very shallow, and it just sogged the whole place up. So I shovel buckets full of dirt through a window into the basement and re-distribute it on my hands and knees. Lots of dirt shoveling.

Next I will repour the portion of the missing retaining wall holding the dirt from the crawl space, from spilling over into the basement proper. Then a vapor barrier will be put down. My work is far from over however. Next I will need to kill all the mold, by spraying EVERY surface, including joists, beams, floors, and walls, not once but twice with an EPA registered fungicide. Bleach doesn't do the trick. Then scrape and vacuum. But wait, there's more. I still have to go over every wood surface with an abrasive tool, in my case, a wire brush on a drill. Vacuum again. Spray with another treatment. All the while crawling in the crawl space. It is freshly dirted, so I can probably handle it.

Still to come: Insulating, painting, replacing rotten support beams. Fun, I tell ya!