Not Wordless Wednesday

It has been five plus months since I have posted on my blog.  I wish I could say I have been so busy molding I did not have time to post.  Well I have been busy, but with other things, mostly good.  I will post some photos a bit later of some of the thighs I have been doing that are more fun.  One less than fun things I have been doing is redoing the old stone walls in the older section of my basement.  This part of the house is at least 100 years old and has always been musty and damp, but recently we got a lot of water in it during a very hard rain.  Fortunately nothing was lost, but it led me to discover that under the stairs and behind some ancient selves a portion of the stacked stone foundation was never mortared in AND  two by six foot section of the floor was never coved with concrete.

Here is what I found after a pulled out the old selves.

After 240 pounds of mortar was applied.

And finally with two coats of Dry-Loc paint.

Here are the windows in the basement, they seem to leak as well.

No more window

New double pain insulated window that you can actually open!
 I still need to get two coats of Dry-Loc on this part of the wall.

I also took the opportunity to look over the rest of this wall to fill in any potential leaks, I found a few spots the took a lot of mortar.  I also replaced two of the four windows in this section as well.  I have purchased the other two windows but need to clean out that section of the basement to get to them.

Besides keeping the water out, the basement has lost he musty smell and the dehumidifier is saying it is 35-40% humidly instead of hovering around 50%.  I have no idea how accurate that is, but it does show a major drop in the moisture level.  While not a lot of fun, it will make being in the basement that much more pleasant.