What I've Been Up To ... Or Down In?

 If you've ever wondered what $130 worth of garbage looks like, here you go.

Don't mind the insanely dead grass. We don't own a sprinkler and it hasn't rained in weeks. But back to the giant pile o' crap. Apparently it costs $125 plus tax to have this much garbage picked up and hauled away. Awesome, right? My garage sale didn't even make that much money. Womp womp.

So, at this point, you may be wondering where all this junk came from. There's a bunch of big black contractor bags underneath that are full of junk from the basement, (packing materials, broken stuff, etc.) And the wood on the left was randomly stuck between the fence posts when we moved in. The rest is from the garage. Turns out the people who lived here before liked to save every scrap of material they used on every project around the house. Definitely past due on getting rid of this stuff.

Oh, and see that coffee can in the middle of the picture? Full of mice. I picked it up and walked halfway down the driveway before I realized it. You can imagine the scene of me running with it held wayyyy out in front of me, dropping it in the pile and then running like hell back into the house. That's when I decided I had enough in the pile and it was time to get the crap picked up.

After that, I filled three blue bins with a ridiculous amount of boxes to be recycled. It's like the day after Christmas over here. lol

Now for the reason behind my compulsive pile making and purging. Have I ever posted pictures of my basement before? Probably not, and you'll soon see why. Here are some pictures I took a couple weeks back, before the garage sale.

See the tile in this portion of the basement? Yeah, that's going to be a problem. It's in the laundry room area too, but it's all cracked and there are tiles missing. Painting it may not be enough...

Sweet window treatments, right?

I think you get the idea. Our basement was a mess. Although honestly it wouldn't have bothered me enough to tackle such a huge project if it wasn't for a few problems that were more than aesthetic. First, the floor, which is chipped and cracked and produces some sort of white foamy stuff when we run the dehumidifier. Not sure exactly what the white stuff is, but we assumed it wasn't great to have around.

And the next problem I found after starting the basement rehabilitation. And it lurks behind this piece of fiberboard:

Eek!

That's right. There's a hole in the wall. In what we assumed was the outside wall. We were wrong. There's a little room back there! It's not anything we would use, though. It's just under the front porch, and must have been dug after the foundation was already laid. And then I guess they cut the hole to run a vent to heat the porch, and then later took it out. That's our best guess. Anyway, the hole is 8" x 12", which means it's smaller than a full cinder block. So patching it is going to be tricky. I talked to an employee at Lowes for tips and decided this was too big a project for me alone. Any volunteers want to come help? ;-)

Since I've aired my dirty laundry (well not literally. Although pictures of the dirty laundry room are soon to come) I feel like I should post a couple pictures of some progress I've made on the basement. To make myself feel better. haha

Here's the pretty yellow wall color I chose for the basement. You can also see the hole uncovered in this picture.

 Ok, I have to explain the picture below. The light grey color to the left was the original floor color. Then I painted it the darker grey color. But the chipped portions of the floor kept coming up on my paint roller so the paint wasn't covering well. So then I had to get this patch stuff to go over the exposed portions, which is the light brown spots. Then, when I went to Lowes to get more floor paint (which is also an epoxy sealer), I found out they no longer had that color. So then I had to buy the new color, which is the light blue along the wall and the spots on the floor.

As usual, this project was spiraling into a much bigger project than I anticipated.

But that's all you get to see for now. I'll post more pictures soon of my progress. I've had a little extra time off this week and have been working hard down there. But I gotta say, being surrounded by spiderwebs and daddy long legs and dust is really starting to get old. I'm ready to get this project wrapped up!