Tackling The Basement: Chapter One
So the basement has made it known that it’s not going to cooperate without a fight. The current score is something like this. Basement: 3. John and Sherry: 1. Good thing we love a challenge. Here’s where we are when it comes to our big underground overhaul…
Many people requested more nitty gritty details about how we go from before to after. Not just a source list and a budget breakdown, but our actual thought process when it comes to figuring out what functions are most important to us, brainstorming a workable floor plan, detailing the pitfalls that we encountered along the way, etc. So we’re not planning to spare a single detail when it comes to transforming our bleak cobweb filled basement into a more finished and functional storage room fit for a king (or at least our beloved extra furnishings, bikes, accessories, and seasonal decor that we wouldn’t want covered in spiders and mold). First the details about where our basement is actually located: it’s directly below the sunroom off the back of our house (accessible by descending a little brick staircase which you can sort of see here in this old photo from when we planted our edible garden).
At 19′ x 13′, it’s a generously sized room (actually the biggest in our house, along with the sunroom above it of course). But that’s about where the positives stop. The challenges in this room far outweigh any other space that we’ve tackled, from the flooding issue (we’ve seen inch-deep puddles down there after a raging storm) to the insane spider situation (webs galore doesn’t even begin to describe it). And then there’s the mildew problem- it’s on the walls, the floor and anything we store down there (we tossed two extra wood chairs down there and were horrified to notice them covered in gross mildew a few weeks later). We also have a giant unsightly water heater in the middle of the room…
…a radon mitigation system to work around (that white pipe to the left of the water heater in the photo below), a strange trap-door in the wall that leads to the crawl space…
…and just two tiny windows to let light into the cavernous cinder block dungeon of a room. Not such a good starting point.
But we’re determined to turn all of those cons into pros- or at least minimize them while gaining a lot more function and form from the soon-to-be spruced space. As we mentioned, because the room has a separate entry from the rest of the house, it will probably never be an area that we use as actual living space, but we’re psyched to turn it into a massively convenient storage room where we can stash things without a second thought… and we have higher expectations than unsightly wire shelves and bowed wooden boards so stay tuned for a room that we hope has more of a built-in look than a tossed together hodge podge of shelving systems. But before we move onto sharing our layout ideas and storage solutions, we had to tackle the issues that made the room completely unworkable. The wetness problem and the mildew invasion, which are actually stemming from the same issue: nasty moisture that gets trapped in our little underground lair.
After a bit of research we learned that there were three major things we had to do to address the water/mildew issue:
- kill the mildew for good
- seal the cinder block walls and the cement floor so the raw stone could no longer absorb up to an inch of water in a bad storm
- keep moisture and mildew from coming back by bringing in a dehumidifier to keep things nice and stable down there (preferable something Energy Star rated so we don’t have to spend an arm and a leg running it during the moister months).
After a bit more research (thanks google!) we learned that the most often recommended way to seal cinder and concrete basements is Drylok, a thick milkshake-like paint of sorts that goes on slowly and stinkily, but after two heavy coats it really does the job. As in no more moisture seeping through the cement and the cinder for at least ten years or more. It even claims on the can that it can stand up to a 22 foot high wall of water. Is that not downright heroic?
But the stuff isn’t cheap. Thank goodness for our spot on the True Value DIY Blog Squad.
Remember we promised we’d be blogging about a series of DIY projects that we would undertake over the next few months using a $1000 gift card courtesy of True Value? Well, their generousity really came in handy when we realized we needed to purchase at least nine (count them, nine!) gallons of $25 a pop Drylok just to seal everything up down there. Yup, that’s at least $225 spent just to solve the seepage problem alone. But doing the work ourselves really saved us a lot more cash-money. By filling any cracks beforehand with exterior caulk and cement crack filler and then rolling the two thick coats of stinky stuff on ourselves, we probably saved at least 1K and up to 3K (based on the estimates we got when we called around for basement experts who come in, caulk, and roll on the Drylok for ya). Not bad for a few days of sticky messy work, eh?
But first we had to prep the room and remove anything we didn’t want in the space so we could Drylok behind it for a seamless look. This meant removing the strange extra light fixture on the ceiling that looked a bit less than symmetrical…
… and taking down the quirky little metal time-card-slot thingie that the previous owner used as a tool organizer (which we freecycled- we have bigger plans for maximizing that wall)…
… and pulling down the old brackets that ran across the opposite wall with a few ancient pieces of bowed wood resting on them…
Then it was time for sealing up any and all cracks with concrete filler and exterior caulk and moving on to the messy Dryloking process. And in working with Drylok we learned a few things. It actually comes in two different varieties, one that’s oil-based and one that’s latex-based. It also comes in a range of colors if you select the oil-based option (white, beige, blue and gray) while the latex-based one is only available in white.
The oil-based stuff is muuuuch muuuuuuch stinkier (with all sorts of crazy warnings about brain damage and death on the label) while the latex-based stuff is supposedly just as good (although some skeptics aren’t convinced) and even though it also stinks to high heaven it’s about half as bad as the crazy oil-based fumes. We actually did our first coat in the latex-based stuff, and even though it’s the lower odor option of the two it still had us nervous so we actually threw in $30 a pop for our health and purchased high-grade gas masks to block 100% of the fumes and toxins from entering our lungs and brains. Thank goodness we did! That stuff would have brought King Kong to his knees. And we just can’t bear to spare any more brain cells, especially when we’ll need them to overcome the rest of our issues in the basement after we have this moisture/mildew thing under control…
Now here’s where the basement earned its “won’t cooperate without a fight” reputation. No sooner had we brushed on our first coat of white latex-based Drylok (to the tune of $125) when we noticed little tan dots slowly coming through our snowy white finish. It was mildew and it was popping up in every corner and even along some expanses of wall even though we had sprayed it down with a 2-parts-water-1-part-bleach homemade spray beforehand (which seemed to kill it for a while, but then we added the Drylok and bam, it was back). Needless to say it was a bit demoralizing to realize that our über expensive paint job was blocking exterior water seepage but not quite solving the mildew problem (and we know getting a dehumidifier will also help, but we were intent on killing off all the mildew before finishing our paint job).
So then it was time to pull out the big guns. We decided to do the necessary second coat of Drylok with the oil-based beige option instead of the white latex-based version. We learned that painting Drylok is not recommended since you can’t re-Drylok over it ever in the future (so if in 20 more years we wanted to reseal the basement, Drylok wouldn’t work if we had painted the walls down there). This made us opt for the tinted version since it’ll hide more dirt and the occasional singular spiderweb better than a blindingly white backdrop… it’s sort of like paint and Drylok in one step.
And everyone knows we don’t have a white wall in the house (hey, how else would all our white ceramic animals and painted pedestal tables pop?). Plus one of the experts at True Value recommended the oil-based variety since it may even block more mildew and create an even stronger barrier against moisture and future mildew growth, especially when paired with a dehumidifier. We’re planning to get that last coat on the walls tonight and tomorrow night (gas masks in tow of course- we’re prepared for quite a stink-fest) and then we’ll be back to share the hopefully mildew-free and much-more-polished-looking results. ‘Cause the leopard print look just isn’t doing it for us. And we’ve even sprayed down the mildew one more time with our homemade watered down bleach cocktail and given it a good ol’ scrub to be extra thorough before our second coat goes on later today (note: check out John’s patented socks-with-flip-flops approach, which protects him from spatter without causing him to sacrifice a pair of shoes that he actually likes).
Oh and for those who wondered how we chose beige as our color among the other options (blue and gray), we thought gray would just make the room look like a cinder block fortress (which it is, but we’re trying to play that down) and the blue was just a bit too pastel for our tastes- meanwhile the beige is a nice neutral color that will really work with the white storage systems we’ll be bringing in for a light and airy look. So that’s how we made that call. And the ceiling will also go beige for a seamless look while the floor gets a nice coat of chocolate floor paint (leftover from this project) for a bit of definition. Here’s hoping we’re on the right track…
What about you guys. Any basement projects looming on your to-do list? Any previous experience with nasty mold and mildew or moisture issues like flooding? Let’s commiserate. And of course we’re open to any and all basement conquering advice as we charge ahead. Fingers crossed that we can score a few points in the next round…
Psst- Don’t forget to drop in on Hamburger’s House for his four-legged version of The Bachelor. That’s right he’s looking for furry suitors and presenting them with bones instead of roses. Should be weird.
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Comments
Enough about Drylock and mold ! My helpful hint is the blanket on the water heater. I just got a new water heater. (right after the dropped a ton on tree removal and my dryer is about to die–it never rains…) Anyhoo, my plumber said that the new water heaters should not have or need blankets because of the new type of construction. If the vents on the water heater are blocked by a blanket or something else, the heater will shut off automatically and cannot be turned on again! This has something to do with new safety regulations on water heaters. Love your site and your city !
A dehumidifier will help your problem, but good ventilation will be a less expensive fix for most of the year. You can buy a humistat, which is like a thermostat, and hook it up to an exhaust fan. This will turn on the exhaust fan whenever the humidity goes above a certain level.
Our new house has a digital fan control that does something similar. We can set it on “random,” which just starts the fan up for about an hour a day, or put it on a program so that it runs for short periods at set times. This allows air to circulate and will do a lot to deter mildew regrowth without the expense of a dehumidifier running constantly.
When we drylocked out basement we were told to do the floor also. Because the moisture comes up through the ground and floor. I was surprised that you were just painting the floor with floor paint. You may want to look into that. We run a humidifier all the time in ours and it makes a world of difference you deffiently want it to just be able to drain into a floor drain because they fill up fast , and since its not a place you will be every day. We don’t have mold or mildew growing in our basement and in rainy seasons we have to empty it every day, sometimes twice.
We put in a sump pump and it made a world of difference.
We have battled a basement that gets wet in heavy rain for 10 years it is not an easy task.
Hey Carla,
We’re actually painting our floor with two coats of Drylok followed by porch and floor paint just for that deep chocolate color so it’s not one big tan box in there (plus the deeper color on the floor hides dirt). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Terrific post guys! A basement overhaul is in our very near future and we have a corner of wall where water seeps in. we think we fixed the source but I imagine some moisture is still getting in. Our big difference though is the basement will be the den/hobby room and because the drylok can’t be painted that will prove challenging.
In your post above you say you are doing 2 drylok layers on the floor but it’ll be covered with brown paint. Is it because the paint is floor/porch paint that you’re going to be able to cover the drylok?
Hey Holly,
Good question! Since the moisture seepage was weeping in through the cinder block walls and not the concrete floor we Dryloked the floor just to be thorough but we’re sure that it’s permanently sealed from those two thick coats (since it’s a lot less sponge-like and absorptive than the cinder). This means we’re confident that it won’t need to be re-Dryloked ever- whereas cinder blocks are so porous that the Drylok can warns that they may need to be re-Dryloked every 10+ years or so, so painting the walls would be short-sighted. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Thank you for this timely and informative post. We are about to replace an ancient poured concrete basement entranceway with one using cinderblock (poured floor). If I hadn’t read your post I would not have known to quiz the contractor about waterproofing. He assures me that they treat from the outside and that Drylock will not be necessary. Do you know if your basement walls were waterproofed from the outside?
Hey Pamela,
Our cinder blocks were not waterproofed from the outside, hence the bit of seepage they demonstrated, but because the drainage of water was addressed from the outide (downspouts were redirected and things were graded in a way that the basement didn’t get much runoff) it was only a smidge of moisture in our almost entirely undergound basement (which could have taken on feet of water if those outside measures weren’t taken. Now that we’ve slapped on two coats of Drylok on the inside, there’s not a drop of moisture to be seen, which is amazing! Good luck with your basement!
xo,
s
Are there any restrictions of using oil based DryLock over the water based? Will there be an adhesion problem, like you would with paint?
Good Luck!
Hey Jamie,
Nope, as a general rule oil-based anything can go right over anything oil-based or latex/water-based without a problem, it’s putting oil-based PAINT over latex PAINT where you’ll have a problem with adhesion. We’re happy to say that our second coat went on smoothly and amazingly there’s no more mildew to speak of! Not one single solitary spot! Yes, there was a happy dance that ensued at the end of that loooong process.
xo,
s
Thanks for the great information. I absolutely love your site/house. Did you consider other paint treatments to the basement floor? The previous owner of my house did a decent job finishing my basement but the floor is still the concrete slab. I’ve considered doing Behr semi-transparent concrete stain since I want a very “natural” look rather than a painted look. I see you used that in your sunroom with mixed results. Thoughts?
Thanks,
Joel
Man, my sympathies! After we bought our house, we decided to remodel our finished basement. We were moving some walls around, so we figured we’d pull up the carpet and Drylok the floors. It was messy, smelly, and such a pain.
We ended up doing our basement, laundry room (separate room in the basement), and garage (attached to the basement) and haven’t had any issues with the Drylok and moisture, except for one instance. We live in an older home as well (built in the late 50s, early 60s) that has older pipes. We had started getting some flooding in our laundry room and discovered that water was coming up out of the drain in that area. Several days and several grand later, we had jacked up the concrete floor in our laundry room to discover a pipe that was no longer a pipe and had it replaced.
Anyway, the point of that story is that we repainted the Drylok in that area after the repair and it has since flaked off in the repainted area. So, I will suggest that, if you ever have an issue that requires that you do repairs in an area, go ahead and repaint the entire thing. Otherwise, it might not adhere like it once did.
Cheers!
Amanda
WOW! Drylock, or any interior waterproofing sealant, is the last thing you want to apply to your foundation walls. Why do you think it blisters? It blisters or bubbles-up because the wall has deteriorated and theres nothing for the paint to adhere to. Trapping moisture in a block foundation wall leads to very costly foundation repair bills. I say this because I inspect 25-30 foundations per week. When I see interior sealant on the walls, I know theres going to be structural repairs involved in the waterproofing process. I can usually rub out the mortar joints with my fingernail because of the damage caused by trapping moisture for several years with the interior sealants. If your having water problems in your basement you have 2 options: excavate and seal the walls from the OUTSIDE, or, control it from the inside with a properly installed drainage system. I don’t say this to be a drag on your blog, but I would be curious to see your post in a few years about the repair costs for your foundation walls thanks to that “amazing paint”. All Drylock does is generate higher profits for foundation repair contractors. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, well…
Hey Max10,
Not to worry! We actually already have heavy duty drainage systems in place around the entire exterior of the house! Water is directed away from the foundation with drains and the ground is graded so no water runs towards the house, which is why our basement was never full of water! It just absorbed a bit of moisture- just “sweating” if you will- so we talked to multiple experts who said in combination with our exterior grading and drainage systems, Drylok was the right solution for us! Hope it helps! We definitely don’t think it’s a cure-all for a space without proper drainage and grading, but if a basement just “sweats” a bit instead of filling up with inches of water it could be a great solution!
xo,
Sherry
Someone mentioned a dehumidifier– fyi, for a little more money (from what I hear it’s well worth it) they make ones that drain themselves and you don’t ever have to mess with them!
How in the world did you “roll” drylok on ? I had to use a brush. That stuff is like tar. I put on one coat on a wall in my basement yesterday. My arms are aching today.
Hey Kyurgo,
The water based stuff is easier to roll (ie: thinner) but we later learned that the oil-based stuff was far superior so we switched over to that for the second coat (here’s a post with more info on that). Oh and here’s a tip for rolling on the oil-based stuff (which may have just been easier to roll on since we already had one coat of Drylok on the wall so it wasn’t as crazy-porous) stir it like crazy. John stirred and stirred it (after pouring it onto a paint tray) so it was a bit more roll-able. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Hello! I love what you are doing to the basement it looks amazing. I’m currently having the same promblem in my basement in one area. I first used the drylok on not a clean block it was already painted. Which I later learned that it needed to be applied to a paint free service. So after a lot of reserch i discovered to paint my will cold press adhesive( it is actually stuff you put on roofs) It took awhile to do that. Now I’m ready to add the oil-based dry lok. I was told this should work. I will keep you posted.
I love your blogs. And Congrats on the Baby bump!
You guys are adorable.
Kristy
Please don’t wear flip-flops or stocking feet when doing home improvement projects. “Safety First” – isn’t that what you guys say?
Hey Barb,
We do try to be the safety patrol and are sure to wear sneakers whenever we do anything that involves heavy lifting or something else that could potentially hurt our feet. But during this simple rolling process (Dryloking is just like painting) John’s feet weren’t in much danger and the name of the game was to avoid permanently ruining his shoes with Drylok. So old hard-bottomed (not rubber bottomed) flip flops did the job- and the socks were actually to prevent Drylok from getting on John’s ankles and feet since the stuff is so toxic and stinky. We should mention that this isn’t a choice that we recommend for others but one that worked for us at the time. We encourage everyone to take whatever precautions they deem necessary when they tackle their own projects. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Icon construction chemicals are a Manufacturers and Suppliers of Construction Chemicals and Water Proofing contractors in Bangalore India.
I love the amount of detail you’ve provided here! We’ve had a bit of a moisture problem in our dungeon of a basement as well, and I’m definitely going to forward this posting on to my boyfriend to get his thoughts on using Drylok!
Here’s a couple of fun basement stories from my adventures in my OLD house -
Finding a dead cat in the crawlspace (oh, ew): http://9-oh-6.blogspot.com/2009/07/we-should-have-named-it-manda.html
And something much more fun – clearing out said crawlspace and finding an entire wall covered in old newspapers! Reminded me of your stories about old stuff you’ve found in your house: http://9-oh-6.blogspot.com/2009/10/clearing-out-graveyard.html