Weekend Basement Warriors

So, inspired by some friends in Cleveland who have an uber-cool basement with a London theme and monikered "The Underground", Eric and I decided to reclaim the first room in our cavernous basement. The room was heretofore home to the furnace, dehumidifier, shelves of comic books, an armoir full of crafting supplies and a pile of project furniture that I've had every intention of decoupaging for the last 3 years (yeah, that's really only about 1/2 the stuff that was in there, but you get the picture).

First we filled in the various holes in the wall with cement and then we drylock painted the entire room - even those walls that did not really need to be sealed, as they are internal walls, but we figured it couldn't hurt. Then we picked a lovely brick red color (same as the one we used for the "wine cellar") and we painted the entire ceiling to camouflage the 100+ years of grime and discoloration - or at least make the beams not so immediately ugly:
While we were up there we also wiped down all of the ducts and cross beams. See the makeshift beam support in the middle of this photo (look for the pole between the ladder and the ShopVac that holds a porch beam to the ceiling):

Eric added some crossbars in a couple places that allowed us to remove the random pole in the middle of the room (apologies to those of you who wanted to practice your stripper techniques):

Then 3 of the 4 walls received a coat of "interactive cream" paint:

With good friends like Suz helping out one afternoon we knocked out the wall painting project in no time:

Suz is also priceless as a photographer and captures a rare "couple" image. We're standing in the corner that we hope houses the bar one day soon:

With the walls and ceiling painted it was time to tackle the concrete floor (after numerous vacuumings and a couple passes with a mop). We believe that once upon a time (eons ago) the front room flooded as it was covered with a very fine layer of silt which we have been sweeping and vacuuming up since the day we got here. Now we're just sealing in whatever little of it is left. First up, a coat of concrete sealer:

And a second coat for good measure. The whole floor is left to "cure" for a week:

And then it gets a nice coat of subtle sage floor paint:

That has to cure for a week as well:

We hang a curtain and rod in the "good room" to shield the view of all of the stuff we hauled out of it to undertake this project. Curtain rod from Big Lots: $10; curtain from Pier One on clearance: $17.50; not having to stare at the almost impassable adjoining room: priceless.

A view of the curtain in action:

The one wall on the left as you enter the room we left white just in case we ever have to re-seal it one day (God forbid). But I was allowed to paint the upper wall and ledge. Now, who can spot the very subtle change in this photo from the one three back?

In the upper left corner you might notice a horizontal board and a cord. The ingenious Mister Martineau created a brilliant contraption to store the dartboard and shield the newly painted walls and wine cellar door:

What you have above is a dartboard on a hinged platform that hooks up to the ceiling when not in use. Hanging from the rafter behind it (and also hidden when not in use) is a bamboo curtain that can be dropped down to protect the walls and door from displaced darts (not from Eric or I, naturally).

In the "while we are at it" category, we decided to replace the ugly vinyl tile on the steps down to the basement. First we had to pry them up:

We found some vinyl tiles at Lowe's that look very similar to our kitchen floor (real tiles). $22 and 1/2 an hour later and we have a swanky new entrance to our future lounge. The oak trim and tin bar signs are from a previous Mister Martineau improvement project:

And now we're onto adornments. From a fence finial found in our backyard (on the old fence when we moved in) Eric created a nifty dart holder:

And in a quest to display some of the cool barware we own (rather than keeping it hidden in our cupboards), I set out to create a shelf that will fit into the wall behind the bar (see the "couple photo" for visual reference). I picked up all of the supplies yesterday afternoon at Lowe's in the midst of the snowstorm. Thank goodness for the help of my husband who's aid (and superior carpentry skills) made this project go twice as fast. The nearly assembled shelf has the decorative molding clamped below. It will also get molding on the shelves, then a coat of stain and poly:

Stairway to Heaven?

I planned on removing the second-half of our basement stairs to waterproof the foundation wall. A secondary goal was to change the stair angle so that I wouldn't hit my head when going down the stairs. You see, the staircase that was there when we bought the house was not the original (I'm guessing the original rotted due to the water). In replacing the original staircase, the angle was altered. You can see below that the final tread of the replacement stairs extended into the doorway.

In the picture below you can see the original stair dimensions which are still visible in the concrete skimcoat. You can also see the 2nd stairway dimensions outlined in the white paint. This is the wall that had moisture penetration.

Below is the stairway with the dirt and debris cleaned out far enough to allow me to 1. access the wall and waterproof it, and 2. install steeper risers so the stairs don't have such a long horizontal travel. Discovering the hole in the floor, I decided to patch that, too.

Below: I cut new risers after calculating the rise/run which would allow me to walk the stairs without ducking my head. This entailed measuring the total vertical and horizontal distances to be covered and trying to find a rise/run ratio that would get you low enough fast enough to avoid hitting your head but still be walkable.

Back inside: After using hydraulic cement and cement patch against the foundation wall, I dryl0ck-painted the whole area. The wood trim in the photo below is where you would hit your head when walking down the old stairs.

Below is the new staircase. It is really great to be able to walk down the stairs without ducking or doing a limbo walk! They are steeper than they were, but not even so steep as dutch stairs.

And finally, a view from the top. Now the stairs end well before the doorway.

Tales from the Underground

Still cold, so still working in the basement. We attacked the next section of wall over the past few days. Step 1, clear the wall.
Once cleared, scrape the loose paint.

Next - patch holes

And then paint, paint, paint.

15 degrees = indoor projects

January has arrived with cold temperatures and a blanket of snow.

Despite the cold, it gladdens my heart to see bicycle tracks in the snow.

Aside from walking the dogs, outdoors is a bit too cold to enjoy. So we decided to work on our basement these first few days of 2010. Below is one of the walls in the first basement room, just as we found it 3 years ago. The bottles are relics from the crawl-space.

We scraped off the loose paint, patched some damaged concrete and began the seal-coat.

And Viola! One white wall! We figure that the one wall is about 15% of the whole room, so we have plenty of work remaining, but it was a good start.

Casings & Cornice

A few weeks ago I wrote about stripping and refinishing some painted door casings. I posted a photo of the white-painted casings next to our laundry closet door. Below is the door after I removed the casings.

At the same time, I removed the painted casings to the door into the second floor den/guestroom.

After stripping the paint and sanding out the remaining paint, I stained and poly'd them. Pictured below is the finished product.

I also made significant ground on the other project, the tin-ceiling cornice installation.

I'm not done yet, as I am 2 pieces shy of having enough to finish. It turns out when measuring I probably used the actual wall/cabinet measurements and didn't account for the 5.25 inches of overhang on any exterior corner, and also I had to line up the seams in the cornice pieces with the seams on the ceiling, which resulted in me needing to cut-off somewhere between 1 and 6 inches on every corner. It was a challenge nailing into the hardwood cabinets, even after drilling pilot holes, but I didn't end up destroying any pieces so I am fortunate. I think I will take a break and just enjoy it over the Holidays!

Tackling the tin ceiling crown molding

Below is our kitchen ceiling. We installed the tin ceiling, lets say, 2 years ago, before the rest of the kitchen was installed. After the flooring, cabinets, counters, paint and trim were installed, we still had to install the crown molding. This, quite frankly, scared the heck outta me, since 1. I've neve installed molding and have no experience with mitering/coping, and 2. the molding is thin-thin-thin metal, meaning it the pieces don't join in a tight seam, it could look pretty poor. Oh and 3. Since it has to mate with the tin ceiling, if I don't get it flush you will see a gap and it will look crappy. So, for the last 16 months I have put it off. But a sudden burst of courage and I decided to take it on.


We purchased the cornice pieces at the same time we bought the ceiling pieces and thankfully did not destroy them during the past 2+ years. Armed with all the installation instructions I could find on the internet and a power-miter saw borrowed from old friends, I was equiped to do the job. Now, to see if I could actually do it.

And below you have section #1. Honestly can't believe how well it is coming out. Not claiming it's perfect, but over-all, quite happy with it so far.

Return of the Street Trees

Over the summer we blogged about how the city cut down all of the street trees across from our house. Well, with the support of our local neighborhood association and our own tenacity, the city agreed to plant new trees "in the fall." After being reminded that fall was fully underway, the city actually did it. The dwarf pear trees pictured below were planted yesterday. Dwarf pears should not grow tall enought to interefere with the electrical wires. As an added bonus, the city planted a total of 9 trees, whereas there had been only 6 on that side of the street.

I'm glad the city followed through and I only hope I'm around to see the trees full-grown!

Strippin' is hard work.

No, no pictures of g-strings and pole-dancing in this post. Just pictures of the upstairs door casings. In our environmental furvor, we used all the salvage wood we could during the renovation. This resulted in us using 6 door casings (12 boards in total) which had been painted. Below is an example.

So, I pried-off one of the casings and sanded it down, stained it and poly'd it. HUGE pain in the butt, as the paint was applied to unfinished wood so it sank into the grain. Getting it out I gouged the board, but not so badly that I had to replace it. Still, hoping to save some time, I looked at the local architectural salvage yard for unpainted pieces with the same profile, but no luck. Then I called a refinisher for a quote on dip-stripping the pieces. At nearly $30 per board, I could probably get new ones milled for that price. So, I bought some stripper from the local hardware store and tried the second board using the stripper. While messy, it was much easier than sanding out all the paint. Below shows the refinished casings on both sides of the door.

It is exciting, as both casings shown above were painted light-blue as of last week. 2 down, 10 to go...

Tiny Canary application images

When it's slow we hijack the houseblog for alternate purposes. I'm going to do that right now as the fine folks at Tiny Canary (a fab local craft show) requested a weblink to view images of submitting artists' work. Apologies to regular readers for your house update interruption.

I've been "professionally crafting" since 1996 when I owned & operated Transformations, a gallery on High Street (where Lindsay Gallery is now) for 5 years. There I wildy painted and decoupaged vintage furniture to my heart's content. When I closed the gallery in 2001 I segwayed into smaller projects with the same spirit that I sold at places like ComFest, Yellow Springs Street Fair and Craftin' Outlaws (and, hopefully in a shared booth this year at Tiny Canary with Clinton Reno).

The majority of my work focuses around a few themes near and dear to my heart: the Short North (using my own photographic images), scooters (using my own and found images), comics (using strictly found, never copied images), and most recently, collaborative projects with my neighbor/pal/awesome graphic designer Clinton Reno. With images supporting these themes I create pendants, buttons, magnets, coasters, belt buckles and mirrors.

First sample, pendants. I make square ($8 each, 2/$15) and rectangular pendants ($12 each) decoupaged on glass tiles, decorated with different images on both sides, coated with a durable resin for protection and waterproofing and finished with sterling silver plated aanraku bails. The rectangular pendant pictured below features an amalgamation of 6 separate images layered for the final effect. Many of my rectangular pendants are patchwork designs:

The square pendants are not quite as elaborate as most feature a single image. Images include Short North photos (from my own collection), comic images (found), scooter images (found and my own), Clinton Reno images, and a small collection of found image pendants.

I discovered this trellis in my friend's backyard and it makes the perfect compact pendant display accomodating all of my square and rectangular pendants (as seen at ComFest):

I'm always in awe of how many buttons folks buy. I make comic, scooter-themed and silly celebrity buttons ($2 each, 3/$5- though only the comic and scooter would be at TC):

One of my signature items is Short North magnets ($5 each). I've sold these for seven years. The photos are always evolving with the neighborhood and this year I started combining 4 mini images on these 2"x2" tiles so people get more of the places they love on their little squares:

The tile magnets are typically displayed on an old metal fridge door (space permitting) that I found, where else, in the Short North when somebody was gutting an apartment!

Clinton Reno is a fabulous graphic designer and friend. We started collaborating on projects last year. His images make outstanding coasters ($8 each, 2/$15):

I also make Short North coasters (from my photos) and comic coasters from found images (the Wonder Woman series is especially popular):

My coasters are typically displayed on a small bookshelf which can accomodate a range of them:

Last year I discovered the joy of making belt buckles ($25-40) and can regularly be spotted sporting one of my own creations. These stick to 3 themes: the Short North, comics and scooters. The odd display is actually a baguette baking pan:

Finally, one of my other signature and most recognizable items is my collection of Short North mirrors ($35 each). A half-dozen of these fit on a small tabletop display:

Thanks for considering the joint Martineau-Reno application. I've submitted bunches of options of my work for consideration but will likely pare down the final offering as necessary according to space constraints. I hope we make the final cut!