2 Laundry Room Tips: One will Help you Sleep, The other could Save Your Life.

By Jason
jason and jenn

Sometimes you get to ride "The Avalanche" together at Disney. Other times... you clean out crap from your laundry room together.

There are two things I love to do with my spare time.  Work on the basement and work on this blog.  Oh… and hang out with the kids, wife, family, friends… those guys too.  And golf.  And sports.  And beer.  I’m sliding off track here.

This past Saturday I couldn’t do any of those things.  My wife Jenn had reported that the washing machine was leaking.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets my attention faster than something in the house that is leaking water.

I investigate and yes indeed there is water, albeit a small amount, in the washing machine tray, which also happens to have a bunch of cracks in the front of it.

So I soak up the water with some rags. We pull out the washing machine and start digging around behind the washing machine and the dryer.

Journey to the Land of Lost Socks:

If you’ve never been behind your washer and dryer before be sure to bring some form of GPS unit or guide dog because it’s a whole different world [Read more...]

The Best Tool I’ve Ever Bought!

By Jason

So light weight that my super-model wife only whined a little bit when posing for this picture.

It used to be that if a screw was buried deep into a piece of wood you might as well get the out the saw, hatchet, hammer or grenade cause you’re going to have to bust it up.

At least that’s how it was in the olden days.  (ala 2001) Then along came the invention of lithium-ion batteries and with it…

The greatest tool I’ve ever bought!

The impact driver. Specifically, a cordless, air-less, small as my hand, impact driver.The Bosch PS40-2A-RT . I’m crying inside as I write this because if I could redo my wedding day I’d ask my Bosch impact driver to be my best man (sorry Dad).

I can’t count the number of times this little tool has saved me hours of frustration. An impact driver looks almost exactly like a regular drill, even smaller perhaps, but trust me, it’s [Read more...]

Installing Recessed Lights in 7 Easy Steps

By Jason
installing recessed lights

First, put on your blue dork suit and ridiculous yellow visor hat. Then rock, scissors, paper to see which wire to cut first.

Installing one or two recessed lights is a great starter project for learning to wire your basement and electrical wiring in general.

If your basement is unfinished then you probably only have those little “string lights” illuminating your space.

But if you’re like me then maybe your kids have started to play down there. Or maybe you have a poker game down there once in awhile or some storage shelves.  Either way, you need some lights!

One of those lights should be controlled by a switch. You can replace that light with a [Read more...]

What Every Woman Loves About My Basement

By Jason
basement ideas art niche

Basement Art Niche - with some sort of fall wheat and bean theme going on. Not sure it's even art.

There’s one basement feature that women in particular almost always seem to notice and comment on first.

The art niche. Women go absolutely bananas for a framed out hole in the wall that’s just for art. And I think I know why.

Women see an art niche as a signal that everything is ok. They instantly make a logical conclusion that if someone had the time and foresight to build a special spot, just for art, then all of the other stuff must be rock solid.

Food gathering, fire making, fighting off saber-tooth tigers, these are apparently taken care of.  This dude has got things so under control that he’s spending time drawing little fluffy clouds and animals on the walls of the cave.

There’s one component of my art niche that I think really sets it off. [Read more...]

Electrical Boxes… and flying death monkeys

By Jason

electrical boxesWalking into the electrical section of your local big box hardware store for the first time is sort of like walking through the Land of Oz.

There’s totally weird stuff that you’ve never seen before. Everyone around you is speaking English but nothing they’re saying makes any sense.  You know instantly that you don’t belong and the only way out is to find the Wizard so you can ask him a few questions.

Chillax Dorothy.  Once you pull the curtain back you’ll realize it’s not that complicated.  Let’s talk about what will likely be your first purchase if you’re finishing your basement [Read more...]

How Do You Build a Wall?

By Jason

Just build a wall. What could be simpler?  There’s is a lot more to building a wall than you might think. Today I want to try and clarify a wall building concept that took me a long time to figure out and was really quite frustrating.  It boiled down to which style of wall building should you do:

  1. Build your wall on the floor of your basement and then ”lift it into place”
    Or
  2. Build your wall “in place”, nail each board as you go (a.k.a. “stick-by-stick” )

Build a wall, then lift it into place

build a wall - lift

How do you build a wall? Not like this, if you're doing it yourself.

Let’s talk about option “A” first, build a wall on the the floor and then lift it into place. Several of basement and construction books have photos of two people working together, building the wall on the floor of the room they are finishing and then lifting it into place.

From a visual standpoint this is the easier method to understand.  This was the first method that I used.  My “one small wall” was going to be about 8 feet long and I had plenty of room on the ground to build it.

It was a little tricky using this method solo because you need to hold the wood straight as you start to screw them together.  (Yes, I recommend starting with screws because it’s easier to back out of a mistake.  And yes… you will make a lot of mistakes at first.

4 Reason NOT to build a wall on the floor and lift: [Read more...]