Working on the Washboard

Most of the fall was spent working on the Washboard. We gutted the basement down to the studs in some places. The lights in the dropped cealing were plug-in shop lights hooked together with several different extension cords draped over the joists.  The previous owners had dogs inside and the carpets smelled awful. The kids love demolition!  Warren worked for a week jacking up the beams and joists so the floor upstairs was at least close to level.

We tackled the upstairs as we could after hours and repainted everything, put up new vents, and at last we got to start putting the new floor in.  We closed three days, worked our tails off and with a little help got the main floor in. We put web crete down to patch the huge holes and put new underlayment down over the whole thing. 

Mr. Precision.  It has to be perfectly square and no excuses!

Jayce helped everyday as long as he could. We took off school and I cleaned and painted the concrete under the washers.  It usedto be butter yellow but we went with a taupey gray. Is that a color?  One of the employees came and helped so we tackled one of the walls with some color too, not the gray.

Caulking the crack, tubes and tubes of caulk!

In the arcade the floor already had underlayment so we had to scrape the old tiles off.  That was a chore! We had a blister contest, and Warren won but Emerald was a close second.

The night we were putting everything back together so we could open, the computer died.  Rick Porter, the computer guy, from church came down at 9 p.m. to see if he could resurrect it for the time being.  He and Jayce got it runing by the next day.  It had too much lint in the fans, fins and motherboard.  Thankfully Jayce has several fuctional computers laying around and one of his had the right ports for the cash drawer.  So we were able to open on time.  God is amazing!