The basement is 80 years old. The flooring and wood paneling? I'd guess somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. Somebody partially-finished it - and I do mean partially - in the 60s or 70s, and since then it has seen flooding and humidity and several thousand generations of spider crickets.
I eventually see this space being refinished - the wall torn down, the ceiling finished with recessed lighting, some closets and cabinets built, nicer flooring. NO peeling paint, NO dust sifting down from the floorboards above, NO wood paneling, and certainly NO bugs hanging out all over the place. Dan wants an entertainment center down here but I'm not sure the space will ever really work for that. It will work as a kid hang-out, complete with the drum kit we recently bought at a yard sale ($80!), inevitable future drum kits, some big ol' couches, a game table.
For now I'd just like to get things cleaned up so we can throw down some all-weather rugs and move some shelving and toys down here. The kids love playing here but there's nowhere nice to put anything and honestly, the chipped-to-hell floor is disgusting. You can't really wash it, it's that bad. I hosed everything down last summer (freaking out the house alarm in the process, apparently it's hooked up to the CO detector and the detector went haywire from all the humidity) and scrubbed with Dr. Bronner's and a push broom. Ugh. It took forever to dry because water got under the tile. In fact, I'm not sure it ever totally dried. Gross.
In a manic fit, the boys and I started tearing up tile last week, taking advantage of decades-dried glue by popping off pieces easily with little more than a putty knife. Pop, crack, scrape, half the floor was done. Woohoo! We'll be scrubbing and painting in no time! My estimate was that the whole tear-up job should take 4 hours or so.
Or not.
Attacking the second half of the job, I discovered that the tile was glued down more securely than the rest AND that the same area was double-layered. WTF? No more popping off of whole tiles. Putty knives became chisels, paired with rubber mallets. Tiny chunks of tile-and-glue sandwich came up. My thumbs blistered. My wrists ached. The kids lost interest. An easy weekend job ended up abandoned for another weekend, sometime after better tools could be obtained and carpel tunnel inflammation calmed down. I'm almost ready.
In the meantime, it stinks down there. It would appear that some moisture can come up through the cement floor (a possibility we knew existed), and with more floor exposed, the air is more humid, and it's nasty. Dan can hardly go down there, and I don't really like going down there, which means our laundry efficiency is greatly reduced.
With any luck, better chisels will be purchased soon, the floor will be scraped and scrapped and scrubbed, and then we can get down to the job of sealing everything up with super-duper paint and decorating. I'd really like to be on the other side of that project RIGHT NOW, enjoying a drum solo and a Lego table from the comfort of a yard sale Papasan or somesuch. If you wanna help, there might be a beer and a turn at the drums for you, too.