Basement Reno Part 2: Slicing and Dicing

Hi y’all,

I promised a blog every two weeks so here is the next chapter!  We spent some hours on Thanksgiving weekend OD’ing on tryptophan, but we also did something I’ve been wanting to do for a long long time. No, I didn’t get to fire a rocket launcher, but we did get to rip all the carpet out of the basement!  Woo!

So, here’s the process.

What you need:

Crowbar, hammer, box cutter, and a mask.  

 

Lovely, eh? I'm all ready for the ball!

A mask is important because there is a lot of dust and dirt trapped in a carpet, as well as the corpses of itty bitty bugs, spores, sweat particles, the residue from spilled drinks, probably someone’s blood from some accident or another and, well, if you’re at all a germophobe, you should probably just replace all your carpet with hardwood because there are all manner of gross things in there, especially after 20 years. Anyway, a mask prevents these things from getting into your lungs. So you can put other things in there, like smog from the city!

The next most crucial step is to spend some time arguing over what music to listen to (Indie Rock beat out Old Skooll Hip Hop this time, my friends).

Step 1: Remove Baseboards

This is what the crowbar is for. The best method is to bring the crowbar about two feet above the top of the baseboard and then with some force, slam it down so it wedges in and brings the baseboard off the wall. Then slide the crowbar behind it and push so the baseboard pops off.

If you’re careful (I wasn’t) you won’t do this (below) to your wall. It’s perfectly logical to assume that you can remove baseboards without damaging the wall, but if you’re getting rid of the wall anyway, who cares! Smash stuff!

Step 2: Prep

Then you have to prep the rest of the room for the dust from the carpet (you can also do it before you remove the baseboards).

Cover any vents with a piece of vapour barrier (or a plastic bag) and tuck tape it on there.

 (sorry, it wasn't the wrong angle when I uploaded it, stupid technology)

If you have any furniture still in the area, it’s best to cover it up. You can cover it properly with drop cloths, or you can use blankets like we did (and wash them later, in theory).

You’ll also want to bar the dust from escaping into the rest of the house, particularly if you have sweet and adorable animals. Or those strange creatures called children. 

Basically, pull a Dexter and make it like a kill room!

Rob has a trick where you screw a piece of old baseboard into the vapour barrier to hold it to the wall at the top. Then you attach two smaller pieces to the bottom flaps so they stay in place while closed (final version not shown here). Ingenious he can be, my dear hubs.

Step 3: Remove Carpet

Then start removing the carpet!  Pick a spot about 2-3 feet from the wall parallel to the length you want to cut, dig your knife in, and drag it about 5-6 inches. Then lift up the carpet via the hold you’ve created. This creates tension so you can run the knife more easily. When you’re cut the length, roll it up, like so!  You can roll the underpad separately if you wish, but why go to all that trouble?

After you’re finished a section of the room, stop removing carpet and sweep!  Seriously, cleaning as you go is so important. The last thing you want to do when you’re all tired and sweaty and beer-deprived is have to pick up all the garbage you’ve left strewn around. Every 3-4 carpet rolls, sweep up! Good old bluey! (By my count there are three things I refer to as "old bluey". Four if you count my old Honda. Ok five, since I've owned two blue Hondas. RIP 1999 Special Edition)

Step 4: Throw Out Carpet

Then, get those rolls of carpet out of there. You have four options on what to do with the rolls:

1) Put them out on garbage day  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7gIpuIVE3k and hope the city gets off its lazy ass and takes them 

2) Take them to the dump (aka pay the city for something they should be doing for you)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlYMlDHsm-4

3) Throw them in a dumpster at Walmart. Ok, I’m kidding about that. Seriously, don’t do that; I'm pretty sure it's illegal  (I don’t have a Walmart video – just Youtube “People of Walmart” if you want to scar your vision forever)

4) Hoard them like a weirdo  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVg-_e-jPO4

Done!  :)

Addendum!

We didn’t remove all the carpet. It would have been too annoying to move the bar (because we’re alcoholics and have more liquor than people have channels on their TV), so we made a little bitty man-cave until we need to take those walls down.

Then, for fun, we decided to take down the drop ceiling. Drop ceiling is very easy to remove – you simply push up on the panels and pull them out.  And sometimes you find surprises!

A vent that was under the drop ceiling that is blocked. Are there Gremlins in there?

It was blocked by this amazing mouse pad. I'm keeping it. I think I'll take it to work and blow everyone's mind with how cool and 90s I am.

There is also a switch that we believe turns on that weird fireplace we have. But we didn’t want to touch it, in case it actually powered a circuit for the TV.

That’s about it for this part of the reno!  Here is Rob contemplating the space.

Next Time:

I’m definitely going to be showing you some other renos, including one that I’m completing next weekend. So expect a new post on Sunday the 26^th! 

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Tips

• What you need:  hammer, box cutter, masks, vapour barrier, tuck tape , drill, some random screws
•   Pull up on the carpet as you cut it to make it easier on yourself
• Clean as you go!