Now that the basement is almost completely finished, I decided that the weekend would be spent trying to clean the garage enough to allow one of our vehicles to be parked inside. I have always taken great pride in the fact that, unlike some of our neighbors, we could actually park both vehicles in the garage and still have room to walk around them. When we decided to start working on the basement though, all that changed. I still took pride in being able to park in the garage, I just couldn’t. It’s amazing how much room sheetrock, lumber, bathroom stuff, etc. takes up.
Tags: basement, bikes, car, garage, lawnmower, lumber, maneuverability, mess, Saturn, scooter, shed, sheetrock, stuff, tiller, van
House | Jeremiah, October 13, 2008 7:10 am | 
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I know that it’s been a while since I posted anything. I actually have good reasons for not doing so. Last week was complete chaos in the Zohner home. Let me try and catch everyone up.
Last Friday, my sister Chelsea got married. Because of this, my mom came into town from Denver. The last time she was here, she made a comment about how the basement looked just as it had months earlier when she last saw it. I wasn’t about to let that happen again so I spent 35 hours over the weekend painting and installing the home theater speakers. I started on Friday afternoon and finally finished Sunday evening. Lucky for me, Chelsea and Nick came over and helped a bit which actually ended up helping a lot because without them, I wouldn’t have been ready on Monday when we had the flooring installed. Now I just have a few things left and then the basement will be complete. YAY!
Tags: Alex, basement, chaos, Chelsea, downstairs, Emma, flooring, home theater speakers, House, Nick, painting, shower drain, wedding, Work
Chelsea, Emma, Family, House | Jeremiah, October 1, 2008 7:53 am | Comments (0)
I’ve come to a horrible realization over the past week as I have been cutting and installing the baseboards and door moldings in the basement: I’m allergic to the wood that I’m using. Well, that’s somewhat misleading because I’m not using real wood. I’m actually using medium-density fiberboard or MDF as it’s more commonly called. MDF is an engineered wood made by breaking down softwood into wood fibers and then combining it with a wax and resin binder.
Something that I’ve learned about it is that formaldehyde resins are commonly used to bind MDF together, and testing has consistently revealed that MDF products emit formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds that pose health risks at sufficient concentrations, for at least several months after manufacture. Well, I think that I have some recently produced MDF in my basement.
Tags: baseboards, basement, door moldings, formaldehyde resins, Holly, Jeremiah, MDF, wood fibers, Work
House, Jeremiah | Jeremiah, September 8, 2008 3:55 pm | Comments (0)
Over the past week, a lot of things have been done to our house. First, I finally finished the drywall in the basement and have started working on installing baseboards. I also managed to get the doors hung but one of them is a bit tweaked so I’ll need to spend some time working on getting it corrected.
I’m hoping to have everything finished by the time that Chelsea gets married a the end of the month. That gives me three weeks to finish baseboards, prime and paint the walls, and get flooring installed. I’ll also need to get doorknobs and window coverings installed but that’s about it. It’s so nice to finally be able to see a light at the end of the tunnel that doesn’t resemble an oncoming train.
Tags: backyard, basement, Chelsea, doors, drywall, Emma, fence, flooring, gates, home improvement, House, Kids, light at the end of the tunnel, neighborhood kids, Oscar, window
House | Jeremiah, September 4, 2008 12:26 pm | Comments (0)
I started working on completing our basement in mid-January. It is now mid-July and it’s almost done. It’s actually so close to being done that we have started looking at carpet and have bought paint for the walls. There’s still a lot to go though. Well, not a lot but what is left is fairly daunting. Will it never end? What have I gotten myself into?
I have been working like mad in my free time to get the mud and tape up on the wall joints. At this point, everything has at least one coat of mud but a lot actually has two coats. I think that I’ll have to do at least three coats but I’ll have a better idea once I sand down the second coat. My skills have developed so that I can actually get things done pretty quickly. Unfortunately though, I have to wait for the mud to dry before I can progress. This severely limits my ability to get things done as fast as I would like.
Well, after months and months, the basement has walls. On Monday I was finally able to get the last of the drywall hung and last night I started mudding and taping. I plan on getting all of the mud and tape up over the next few weeks and then it’s on to the baseboards.
As I look at the nearly completed basement, I feel a great sense of pride in knowing that I built it and it still stands.
After a few weeks off due to an extremely busy schedule, I was finally able to resume construction on the basement this weekend. Since I have two tons of drywall sitting in my garage, and hanging it is the next step, that’s what I did.
I know nothing about hanging drywall other than it’s heavy and takes a lot of screws. I bought a 25lb. box of drywall screws so I’m good there but because of the “it’s heavy” thing, I opted to rent a drywall lift to assist with the ceiling. I also enlisted the help of some friends, including Chelsea’s love interest, Nick. After 12 hours, we were able to get the entire ceiling and part of the walls in the family room finished.
My original goal was to have our basement completely finished by the end of March. I looked at the calendar and discovered that today is the end of March. Considering the fact that I have yet to start hanging drywall, I don’t think that I’m going to meet my goal.
When people set goals, then horribly fail to meet them, they will usually set a new, more realistic goal. I think that I’m going to be a bit different here. Yeah, I could push the “wannabefinished” date back to the end of April, but we’re going out of town this weekend and the week after that, my mom is coming into town. That means that I realistically won’t be able to spend an entire Saturday working on it for three weeks. If a goal can’t be accomplished within a week, then it isn’t worth setting. Just kidding. I hope to be done with everything by the end of May.
Last night I decided that the only thing that’s holding me back from finishing insulating the ceiling in the basement is a lack of light. That’s not such a big deal, but in order to get power to the light switch, I needed to wire every single plug in the basement. Why did I have to put the switch at the end of the circuit instead of the beginning? Guess I didn’t think that one through very well.
I decided that I just needed to take the time to get the wiring done. As much as I hate wiring outlets and switches, It needs to be done. Well, now it is. I didn’t kill myself or start a fire. I did see some sparks but that was not my fault.
Today while I was making the kids lunch, I discovered that there was red and green coloring all over the wall. And I mean all over. It started in the kitchen, went down the hall, and covered the walls in both of the kids bedrooms. Coincidentally, both Alex and Hannah were running around with red and green colored pencils in their hands. Figuring out how the marks got on the walls was not going to be a tough mystery to solve.
I asked Alex, who was holding a red pencil, who did the marks on the wall. He immediately threw Hannah under the bus and blamed her. His three-year-old brain isn’t advanced enough to get rid of the incriminating evidence he was holding in his hand so he ended up getting busted and spending extra time in the corner for lying.
