Covering Up Past Mistakes

One game we like to play here at the Porter House is discovering how previous owners had covered up their 'work'. The most recent one I found was dealing with a shelf in the basement. At some point the foundation had been reinforced with a really nice concrete block wall. It is done really, really well, which put me in a state of both shock and awe. The problem is that they didn't finish the project, again shock and awe </sarcasm>. They got the hard part done and then just called it 'good nuff'. The retaining wall was filled with earth and then covered up with old fake wood paneling....

It is much creepier in person

I have never before seen roots with no plant attached

Pro Tip: Wood rots

Apparently the people who did this didn't realize that covering up damp earth with wood paneling wouldn't end well. This 30 foot stretch of rotten wood causes the entire basement to have quite the nasty funk.

Maybe it was a period thing

Even though we have the water problem solved for the most part, I still wanted this shelf cleaned up to actually be able to store boxes here without them cultivating a mold colony. This meant an hour of ripping up rotted wood and trying to get it outside. Unfortunately rotted wood doesn't really hold together. This project turned into me grabbing handfuls of wood/earth mixture and throwing it outside through the bulkhead. I did not even think to use a garbage bag until writing this just now....

Changing the world one handful of crap at a time

The removal was the easiest part. Now I had a nice stretch of dirt that I could use either as a cave mushroom garden or cover it with concrete. I chose concrete mostly because I'm not sure what I would do with cave mushrooms.

We are familiar with my past run-ins with concrete, so I decided to buy new bags that would cure properly. Off I trotted to the home improvement store to buy a bag of concrete. A couple bags should be fine right?

Wrong.

Pro Tip: Measure how much space you need to cover with something before buying the covering stuff itself.

Luckily for me there was a little sign above the bags of concrete saying how many bags would be needed for different size surfaces. I was still guessing but the sign said about 8 bags would cover 10 square feet, so I went with that. Interestingly the 60 pound bags were a tenth of a cent cheaper per pound than the 80 pound bags.

The guys at the home improvement store got upset when I  reenacted this...

My poor Altima did a good job of bringing 500lbs of concrete home in the trunk. Barely even whined getting on the highway. Getting the concrete in the car, out of the car, then into the basement was a different story. I am pretty sure this is the exact reason why the project was never originally finished.

Now that I had all the concrete down cellar and the hose through the window, I was ready to mix. Mixing concrete is hard work, even with the super mega mixer attachment I was using.

I'm still shocked that anyone can buy these things

Shortly after I finished with this project I remarked to the wife that concrete sets quickly. I knew this in my head but I still thought I would have plenty of time in between each bucket. Again, I was wrong. Halfway through mixing my second bucket I noticed that the first pile had already started to harden. This is when the panic set in. Now I began frantically mixing up buckets of concrete and then running to the shelf to pour them. Once I had enough poured to cover several feet of shelf, I used a piece of wood I found to try and smooth it out.

Professional tools for a professional job

This process went on for only an hour but felt like an eternity. Due to the badly done ductwork you can only walk hunched over in the basement. Walking bent over at a 90 degree angle and carrying 100lb buckets of concrete was no fun. In retrospect it was only 8 total buckets but it was still horrible and painful. Whine whine whine.

Amazingly I had purchased exactly the right amount of concrete. The last bucket filled up the final corner with just enough spare to cover the few spots I had missed. This is usually the spot in the home improvement shows where they have a montage of people smoothing out the concrete so I wasn't exactly sure to do it. I ended up using that same piece of wood from earlier and walked around hitting the concrete with the flat side. I think it made it smoother but I really don't know.

It worked well for this dude

I didn't bother cleaning up. I was covered with mud and concrete, water from the busted hose, spider webs, who knows what else from down there, and was tired. So I just left a bunch of empty bags of concrete and piles of concrete dust everywhere. However I did go back down the next day (not to clean up) and was shocked by the lack of stench. It seems like covering up the dirt and removing all the rotted wood was enough to stop the smells from wafting up like so many spirits during a raise dead ritual.

Ignore the hole in the corner of the foundation...

I should have put a fake skeleton in the dirt underneath

Now that the shelf is mostly cured I am considering going back down with some concrete resurfacer to smooth it out. In the mean time though, I have a new shelf that I can store stuff on that won't rot away on me anytime soon!

- The Porter -