I was so sad about the whole flooding ordeal, (read Part 1 for more about the flood) we had paid for a FINISHED basement after all, that I went into a deep depression and told my husband he was going to have to take responsibility for getting it back together.  He drylocked the cement block walls, which I thought wasn’t necessary, but hey, I didn’t want to be in charge.  Notice the lack of windows, well the date stamp on the picture is December 3, 2011.  For the record we have now been without a basement for 6 months!  I am even more depressed. 🙁

We went overboard on insulation, because we figured the walls were open, why not do it the right way.  We used this tutorial from Family Handyman, Method 1, using 2x4s.

Source: Family Handyman

I don’t think I have any pictures of ours along the way, but our materials were slightly different.  Our rigid foam insulation was actually 1″ pinkish stuff from Owens Corning.  Our fiberglass insulation was faced (I don’t know who would use the un-faced stuff in the picture above, it makes my skin itch just looking at it). For drywall we used purple, moisture-resistant stuff from Gold Bond. One of the best pieces of advice from this tutorial was to use a pressure treated 2×4 for the bottom plate!  (I think this is why we decided to tear out all the studs, because the original bottom plate looked moldy and disgusting and it was impossible to replace it without taking out the studs.  Plus we wanted to re-do the insulation anyway.)

Lars replaced the outlets with the same ones we used throughout our entire house, these are child resistant and I love them.  Go ahead and try to stick a paperclip in there (like while you’re at Home Depot, not once they are already installed, duh).  It won’t work.  Pressure has to be applied evenly on both sides for something to go in.  FYI – These are sooooo much better than the stupid plastic plugs that are a choking hazard.  Cheapest if you buy a 10 pack – $19.99.  They make a GFCI version we used in the bathrooms too.  And they’re rectangular, so they’ll match your new flat switches too.

Anyway…  The drywall went up s-l-o-w-l-y.  My brother got a drywall screw gun for Christmas (pretty sure it’s this model) and came over to help Lars some time in January.  It was mostly drywalled by July 2012, just in time for the basement to flood again.  Crazy, huh?

This time we were able to tell where the water was coming from because there was no carpet in the way.  It was coming from the AC/furnace in our storage room. We had that repaired by an HVAC guy.  I don’t mess with that stuff.  Thankfully there was no real damage, except for some gift wrapping stuff.

I do take full responsibility for adding additional project as we went along, thus slowing the process further.  I had always wanted to make a hideout under the stairs.  I had pinned this picture a while ago.

Honestly I can’t figure out whose original work this is. The image is used on many blogs, but this is what is listed as the original source: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7i4vxpfWT1qbi1f7o1_500.jpg

So I added a space under our stairs.  That’s Finn helping me out with his goggles and tool box.  Isn’t he the cutest??  To make it even more difficult, I decided to add a built-in bookshelf.

Finally it was time to prime the walls…

…But this post is already super long, so check out Part 3 for more.

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