Monday, August 16, 2010

The New Game Room - Repairing the Walls

Our basement was made of cider block walls.  The problem with cider block walls is over time, they start to show cracks from settling.  Sometimes those cracks can become big problems and sometimes those cracks can just be cracks.  Luckily, there was no water leaks or foundation issues from the cracks we had. 

There was one issue though.  As I stood close to the wall, examining the cracks, I watched a tiny spider crawl out of one.  EWWWW!!!  That was all I had to see!  Off to Home Depot we went.

I said to the sales person, "I have spiders coming out of my crack".  Ok, I really didn't say that.  We explained our problem and were recommended to use this:

We were told Drylok's Fast Plug Hydraulic is designed for settlement cracks.  Words of advise, this stuff dries FAST!  Work fast with it.

I know.  It looks worse than it really was, but it did the trick!  Within 10 minutes, we were ready for the next step, paint!


 The Home Depot sales person then suggested water sealing the walls with Drylok paint.  It was advised that we use masks when painting with this product.  We even brought in fans and locked our animals out of the area.  Very strong odor.


This is after the first coat.  After two coats, you could hard see the cracks!

By the way, see those nasty green baseboard heater?  It was a dead bug graveyard!

Next was a color.  We did not want to paint the whole basement.  Just a section to separate the space.  We scored a can of Behr Masonry paint for $5.00 in a tan color!


See the former nasty baseboard heater now?  Phew!  Much better!

Hooray for mistake paint!




The walls are officially done in Clint's new Man Cave!

7 comments:

Scientific Housewife said...

Looks great! We have problems with tiny spiders in our house too.

Unknown said...

This project is moving along so fast looks great

jen @ homeinthecountry said...

Looks great! We were just talking about using drylock in our basement yesterday! Yours looks amazing... now we have even more reason to try it!!

Jenny said...

It looks great, love the color! The spider would have been enough for me to do something about the cracks, too! Hate them (and I just found a big black one in my bed the other day- *shudder*).

Sara @ Russet Street Reno said...

I have to get my hands on that cement for our leaky basement!

elizabeth said...

can't wait to see how hubby decorates it -

Kim @ NewlyWoodwards said...

How have I missed this??? It looks amazing. I need to try that. Seriously. The basement is probably going to be my project, and I"m reveling in your basement updates.