Coldroom
First up we'll start with the nasty, disgusting cold room project... a coldroom is typically a small room in the basement that is part of the concrete foundation and is equipped with an air intake and exhaust to circulate the air from the exterior and keep the room cold. The room is normally used to store canned goods, preserves (pickled stuff in jars) and is popular with the local Italian populace for making wine, cheese, meat for cold cuts, sausage etc.
Well this room was nothing more than a death trap, literally. The room had no ventilation, water penetration everywhere both from the ceiling and the floor and enough mold and spiders to kill a small village. Mold is absolutely DEADLY in a house, and this room was FULL of it. Not only that, but they had poorly constructed walls of particle pressboard, foam and wood slats and all of that has been getting soaked for YEARS. The wood was rotten, black, slimy and moldy... in fact there were sections of wood that literally turned to mud when I would grab it with my GLOVED hand. Flat out, the floor was a danger to anyone in the house and needed to be addressed immediately. So my brother and I put on our respirators and stripped the entire room right down to the concrete foundation.
Here you can see a section of wall where we've cut away the wood, foam and wall studs. Those black stains you see on the walls (especially in the corner and under the sides of the window opening) is water and mold/mildew. If you look at the window sill, you can see the lower part of the window frame is completely black and rotten. The blobs just in front of the window sill are piles of mold and chunks of insect nests.
All the pieces we tore from the walls were cut up and boxed, then carried outside to the garbage container I had rented. We actually filled a 10 yard commercial container to the top with the junk we hauled out.
My brother and I saluting the mold and spiders!
The room has now been totally stripped and we've replaced the entire window frame. Eventually I will replace the window itself, but for now we simply took apart the sliders, rebuilt the frame and put the windows back in. You can see some of the expanding foam (yellow stuff) at the top left of the photo and the can of foam itself is sitting on the table saw. You will also notice the very dark line going around the entire floor where it meets the walls. That's all wet muck that still hasn't dried out yet... the fans took over a week to dry it out enough that I could vacuum it with the shopvac.
My coldroom also houses the circuit breakers... note the dark stains on the ceiling from mold and water and the floor is dark with soaking wet nastiness. Once we pulled off all the wood and crap from the room, every inch of the concrete was wet. We knew water was coming in from a few areas, but it was impossible to tell with the amount of water that was everywhere.
Still drying stuff out...
At this point, months went by before any additional work was done to the interior of this room... we had to address numerous issues with water getting in. Just above the cold room was the patio door that leads to the backyard. Well, any time it would rain, water would POUR in to the cold room like a shower and it was clear it was coming from the patio door base. So the entire patio door was torn out, we sealed and rebuilt the frame area and we installed french doors. (I'll post photos of that later). We also covered the entire exterior of the cold room in vinyl siding to protect the concrete from further water exposure and allowing water to get in through the upper seam where the concrete ceiling of the coldroom met the foundation walls. I'll post photos later so you can see what I mean... I also did some extensive renovations to Maibbeth's condo for a month and a half and nothing was being done on the house at that point.
So, fast forward to about a month ago and I was finally satisfied that we had no more water coming in to the coldroom and I could safely rebuild the room in to something normal. This house has VERY little in the way of available storage space, so this room was going to be a much needed storage area, with wall to wall racks, but I still wanted it to look like a finished room. The walls and floor have also been bleached and totally cleaned, and I poured a new cement floor that was level and fixed the plugged floor drain, which is commonly found in coldrooms. I won't be using the floor drain at all, but I didn't want to hide it just in case I need access to it later down the road.
Now, the room was still getting damp in heavy rain in a couple of spots along where the floor met the wall, but we're talking little spots maybe 2 inches big. Not a big deal, and once I start to fix up the exterior and I slope the lawn away from the house (now everything slopes TOWARDS the house, which is BAD), this will stop. So the first thing I need to do is build a sub floor and keep wood AWAY from moisture. The first thing I did was brush on a coat of water proofing sealant used for concrete and asphalt. Typically this is only used for exterior applications, but it will work fine for the coldroom. I brushed on a heavy coat all along where the floor meets the walls. Next up, I built the sub floor using a great product called DRIcore (click here for details), which is made specially for basements with moisture issues. Basically it's a 2' x 2' piece of plywood coated in resin with a plastic base on one side with little feet to keep the plywood part off the floor. Each section is grooved so they just interlock together for easy install. So here you can see the black sealant along with the DRIcore installed.
OK now it's time to install a vapor barrier and get the frame in place. It's extremely important that I install some form of vapor barrier between the concrete and the wall or else we're going to end up with the same problem of tins of moisture behind the walls and rotting our work. This was a critical error in the old room, they had no vapor barrier. This is what happens... in the winter, the concrete gets extremely cold but the inside of the room is warm and this warm stagnant air gets trapped in the walls with no air circulation and causes condensation to build up on the concrete. The condensation becomes heavy enough for water to start dripping down the walls to the floor where the wall studs are and now you have water getting in to the wood and other materials and you start developing rot and mold. So to prevent this, you create a vapor barrier that will stop warm stagnant air from hitting the cold concrete. In this case I used Durafoam from Plastifab (click here for product details). This gets installed right against the concrete and I used duct tape to tape up the seams. I used the same stuff on the outside as well when I installed the vinyl siding. I use contractor glue in a tube to hold the foam up in place, then the 2x3 framing wood is installed right against it.
The framing is free standing, nothing is nailed to the concrete itself. I simply make sure everything fits very tightly together and that will keep the walls where they need to be. Then I take out the framing nailer and away we go with will studs, set with 18" centers (this means that the studs are spaced 18" inches apart from the center of each stud). I also installed some ceiling studs to support my pending suspended ceiling and light fixtures.
By the way, you'll notice I didn't use DRIcore on the ceiling... I'll explain why later.
I've gone ahead and passed 14 gauge grounded electrical wire to I can have two electrical outlets in the room, so now it's time to install drywall.
Drywall is in, time to cut out and install the electric outlets... there's one here and the other is under the electrical panel. You can also see wiring in the ceiling for the lights.
First of 3 coats of drywall compound done and drying... I'll do a second coat a couple days later, let that dry and sand it, then do a final coat and sand that down with a fine drywall mesh. We're then ready for paint!
While the compound dries, I think it's time to tidy up my work area a bit...
OK kind of a big jump ahead here... I've gone ahead and primed/sealed the walls with Killz primer and painted two coats of CIL latex in a light grey/blue color. Once the paint was dry I installed the suspended ceiling, installed the lights and installed the shelve system.
Earlier I had mentioned that I didn't install DRIcore on the ceiling... the reason being that I have installed egg crate tiling in the ceiling (the chromed grill parts of the ceiling) and this will ensure that I have air circulating in the ceiling on a constant basis, which will prevent the buildup of condensation and moisture. Unlike the walls, the air in the ceiling will be moving and ventilated, whereas the air in the walls is basically dead non-moving air.
Next up, I installed floating floor I picked up from the Home Depot liquidation area for $0.50 a square foot and then installed floor trim.
Here you can see I've preserved the floor drain (I shoved a chrome bathtub drain I had in the 1.5" pipe I installed in the floor) and I built a new landing in the door frame out of the same flooring material and added a brushed metal plate. I will eventually build a door frame to go around the rest. Note the old water stains on the right section of the door frame from when water would pour in from above and look at the color difference between that piece and the 2x3 wall stud against it!
I then built a custom cabinet to cover the electrical panel and installed switches to the side... one switch controls the lights, the other is for the fireplace fan located on the other side of that wall. I then finished off the ceiling around the cabinet.
Nice and cozy in there...
Room is ready for stock!
I still have three more things to finish up in this room... I need to build an inner window frame and add trim to it so it has a finished look and then build the inner frame for the door. The finally I will remove the door and trim it to fit properly in the door and then install a couple of vents so that air circulates between the room and rest of the basement.
More to come soon... Feel free to post your comments or questions
September is master bathroom month!
