Just because we haven't posted here in a while sure doesn't mean we haven't been working hard on house projects, I can assure you! Between our row house's basement project, the hallway in our Foursquare, teaching our new dog, Truman, the ropes, a server crash that impacted the blog, life in general, and many outdoor projects, we've sure had our hands full. Rather than trying to bombard you with a million and one little details from all of the projects, let's focus on just one for today. 

It's THE CRAWLSPACE DIG!!!!!! 

This is a project that we've been thinking about since nearly day one in our home. Way back when we bought our house in 2003, we knew that we'd possibly need to handle our mess of a crawlspace. I mean, this is how it looked in those early days.

That's the look from our basement peering into the crawlspace. Abandoned steam pipes, random insulation, HVAC ductwork, a rats nest of wires (most of them not doing anything), and a mound of dirt almost up to the floor joists in the middle.

This is following the first hour of digging

While we've been staring at this mess for over 16 years, we were never quite sure how, when, or why we'd tackle it. So before I launch into the project, let's take a moment to cover the purpose. 

One of the projects we're working on is the conversation of our home's heating from forced air to boiler-fed radiant floor heat. We'll eventually cover this in more detail, but it's an essential factor as to why we're digging out our crawlspace. 

We're not trying to turn our crawlspace into another room because that would require way more effort and engineering. Rather, in order to install radiant floor heating on our first floor, we're going to need access to the underside of the floor. We can only accomplish this via our basement and crawlspace...and while our basement is in good shape for it, our crawlspace doesn't really have enough room for us to even think about crawling!  

To complicate matters, years ago someone ran plumbing and HVAC duct through the crawlspace and to the back of the house. To run this they had to dig space for themselves. In the true half-assed nature of a lot of the work that seems to have been done to our house in the 1980s, the dirt that was dug wasn't removed, but rather mounded onto its neighboring dirt. This is why the dirt was piled up to the floor joists of the room above. This is also what we had to rectify.

We'd given this epic hand dig process a fair amount of thought. Our questions boiled down to these. 

"How does one remove mass amounts of dirt from a small area?"

"How does one accomplish the above in an area to which there is no access from the outdoors?"

"How would we accomplish this without making a giant mess in the house?"

"How do we dispose of the removed dirt?"

"How in the hell are we going to do this ourselves?"

To perform this task, we initially settled on a ridiculously inefficient process that highlights my foolishness. 

I just started digging...digging and filling a 5-gallon bucket full of dirt. Then I started to dump that bucket into a pile on the floor on a tarp. I mean, this ain't rocket surgery after all. 

This seemed like a reasonable approach...apparently because I hadn't really giving my stupid plan much thought. Then we'd need to take the dirt out of the basement one bucket at a time, filling those buckets up again from the pile on the floor and dumping them into a vehicle of some sort (I was thinking...a truck...because I'm brilliant like that). 

Then we'd drive the dirt to...somewhere...then shovel it out of the truck. If you're following along, that's filling and emptying the same dirt into a bucket or container three separate times before it reaches its final destination. I am so SMRT! The look on Wendy's face says exactly how smart I am.

To facilitate this poorly formulated process, we also enlisted the assistance of our neighbor, Connor. Connor is the 22-year-old lad that lives across the street, son of our good friends, and boy that I've known since he was about six years old. Connor is a recent college grad, looking for a little extra cash for the summer, a fan of CrossFit and agony, and willing to lend a hand to my desire to do my own manual labor, probably because he's worried I might share embarrassing photos of him when he was much younger. I would never!

However, Connor is not a small guy. Unlike the photo above, circa 2010 and showing off his masterpiece gingerbread house, he's now approaching 6'2" and has me beat by probably 40-50 pounds. This did mean that Connor would not be able to dig in the tight space of the crawlspace. Lucky for him, I would be the one digging and pushing dirt toward him. Connor would stand at the opening to the crawlspace and would fill the buckets and take them out to the truck.

"Truck?!?" You ask. No, we don't own a truck, but we were able to borrow a truck for a day. Our good friends and neighbors own a 2000 Ford F150 that they graciously allowed us to use. 

I'm telling you, if you ever luck into a neighborhood as good as ours, hold onto it as your life depends on it. You can't put a value on friends and neighbors like the ones we have; it's truly priceless. 

Ok, back to how I was taking advantage of our friends and neighbors' generosity to enable us and our ridiculous attempt at a labor-intensive project.  

The first truckload of dirt was underway. I was in the crawlspace digging and Connor filling, hauling, dumping, and returning. While I dug, I also did math in my head. The truck we were using is a half-ton truck, but that doesn't indicate the amount you can haul in it like it did in the 1970s or so. Instead, modern trucks have a payload capacity based on the Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR). Sparing you the crazy details of using this value to calculate payload, it means that the truck we were using could comfortably haul about 1,500 lbs of dirt at speed before things get a little squirrely. 

I said to Connor, "Hey Connor, about how much do you think each bucket of dirt weighs? We need to know this to calculate how many we can safely dump in the truck."

Connor responded, "Not sure. Maybe 30 pounds?"

From the dirty and cramped sarcophagus from which I was digging, I enthusiastically responded "Great, that means we can dump..." quick head calculation, "about 40 buckets and still be in good shape." 

Connor filled bucker after bucket, almost as quickly as I could push the dirt back to him. Once full, he would walk them out back to the truck, two at a time, and return to the basement to keep filling. When we'd successfully filled and dumped about 40 buckets, Connor reported our progress, and then we dumped four more and called it a load. 

I thanked Connor for his effort and headed out back to drive the dirt to our Foursquare, where I planned to dump it in the low spots in the front yard. 

As I walked to the truck, tired and broken as if I'd just spent several hours rolling around and digging in nothing but dirt as old as dirt, I noticed a problem. The bed of the truck was nearly touching the rear wheels. 

It turns out that young Connor doesn't truly know his own strength. Apparently, those 30 lb buckets of dirt weighed in more in the realm of 50 lbs - 60 lbs. So the truckload we thought was good to go at about 1,250 lbs actually weighed in at a solid payload of about 2,100 lbs - 2,500 lbs. I wasn't about to chance it, so I did what any reasonable insane person would likely do in this situation (don't you even say "hire someone"), I started shoveling the dirt back into buckets and setting it in our backyard for the next dirt run. 

After removing about 600 pounds of dirt from the truck, satisfied that I'd successfully rectified this minor misstep among many other flawed aspects of strategery, we headed to our Foursquare to dump the first load.

Sweating my butt off in the 100-degree heat of the day, and then working well into the night, we filled and dumped load after load. However, with each passing load, we got just a little bit smarter. Watching us figure out how to do this smarter, faster, and easier was likely similar to watching a monkey learn how to use simple tools. 

To ease our pain, we hit up Lowe's and bought ourselves enough 5-gallon buckets to make a full truckload (25 to be exact). Then we started filling those buckets and staging them in the basement, rather than dumping them on the floor only to fill them up again. Our exercise in near futility gave way to a somewhat fruitful yet foolish endeavor. 

Filling the buckets, staging them, then carrying them up and loading them in the truck bed for transport was far more effective than the constant filling and dumping we'd attempted early on in the process. Twenty five buckets, about 1,250 lbs of dirt per load, and a relatively quick process for both filling the truck and dumping the buckets. Our process was becoming a well oiled machine full of dirt and debris. 

The digging itself was difficult but not impossible. Using a trenching shovel to pull and push the dirt around, and a rotary hammer with chisel bit to break up the hard packed clay soil, proved to be an effective means for accomplishing our goals. 

While Connor had to head back down to a summer job, I continued to work on my own, albeit at a much slower pace. We shuttled load after load of dirt, and when all dirt had been removed we tallied roughly 11,000 lbs of earth that we'd removed from the crawlspace. 

Now mind you, we were only removing enough dirt to give us space to work. We weren't "digging down" or removing anything more than the mound that was in the middle of the space. I can't imagine the effort if there was going to be an attempt at any actual added room. But here's the "after" of the space to show how far we've come.

For reference, here's the before.

At the end of each day my clothes looked like they'd been in some sort of a spaghetti western and I'd just taken my horse down to Old Town Home, gonna ride until I can't no more, covered in dirt from head to toe. 

This is just the first phase of a much larger project. This is decidedly unglamorous but undoubtedly necessary. Next up we'll install a vapor barrier, install the radiant floor heat, and insulate the entire space. 

And before you ask, yes, we found LOTS of really cool stuff while digging. But that's a story for our next blog post, that I promise will be in many fewer months than the span between our prior post and this one. Here's a teaser.

So stay tuned, as we'll take some time to share some of the fantastic stuff we found while playing around in the dirt below our floors. 

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Yes folks, this blog post isn't a joke, so don't worry, you're not going to be had in the last line or two. However, this post is a bit out of character, as it largely involves how closely we worked with a great contractor to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish. 

If you'll recall, back in November we told y'all about working on a major basement overhaul in our Old Town row house. It was about the time of our last blog post that we somehow reverted to the ways of our 20 year old selves and went full bore on renovation work.

Here's the #1 April Fool

I'm talking 8 hour day job work, 8 hour house work, a break or two to eat, some long days, late nights, raw hands, and lots of sore muscles. And though we hired out a good amount of the work we were doing, that certainly didn't stop us from participating as much as if we were doing it all ourselves. 

The goal of our basement work is to turn the space into a wood shop. Everyone on HGTV talks about a basement "man cave," but I'm sorry, that's just too cliché. In our house we're far more interested in a unisex and utilitarian space that will work as a separate shop and laundry. Let's collectively get over the idea of "man cave" and instead go for "gender neutral room where necessary, productive, and cool shit happens." Deal?

For our project and working with our mason, Sean Moore of Moore Stone LLC, we had to devise a plan of attack. Our basement walls had been covered in thick and failing waterproofing paint. We wanted to remove the paint and have Sean and his guys repoint everything. This meant we had a good amount to get done before Sean and his guys could start work. Naturally, we went ahead and set a start date as encouragement to get everything done.

Since we bought our home in 2003 until now, that old waterproofing paint had gone from bad to worse. But I'll tell you one thing, removing waterproof paint is not an easy task. While removing the paint, we noticed it had adhered with an especially strong bond to any of the cement mortar that had been used, so we also wanted to undo some of the cement mortar repointing that had been done years ago before it began destroying the brick.

If you're a fellow old house enthusiast, a casual reader of old home magazines, or even a viewer of historic home renovation shows, you know that using the right mortar is about the most important thing you can do when it comes to caring for historic masonry. This is due to the fact that historic bricks are inherently soft, and the mortar that cushions the bricks from one another needs to be softer than the brick, lest you end up forcing the microscopic natural movement of the brick to cause deterioration. 

We talked about proper mortar selection as far back as 2013 when we were trying our hands at repointing some of our brick ourselves. The idea is simple, user proper historic mortar and DON'T use any Portland Cement when it comes to mortar with old bricks. There are several options on the market, but all involve using a lime based mortar rather than cement mortar. Since cement mortars cure harder than the brick itself, and the brick moves naturally during the normal freeze/thaw and expansion/contraction cycles of the seasons, cement mortar can cause soft bricks to be destroyed from within...and there's no coming back from that.

When working with old masonry, Sean typically works with type S lime mortar in a color that will look good with the brick. However, in working with us we'd hoped to use one of the specific mix of colors that you can get from DeGruchy's LimeWorks.us. We got ourselves a sample pack of their Ecologic mortar colors and chose one that we felt looked best.

The standard colors are fine, but too consistent for our taste. Old mortar was mixed with sand that had plenty of natural color variations from stones and other elements. LimeWorks has a few options that mimic with look by mixing a few colors and then adding in flecks of coloring. The final color we ended up choosing was their 90%/10% mix of DGM 050/SGM 250 with XF slag flecks (3rd from the bottom I believe).

Okay, I'm getting too far away from what we were accomplishing, back on track.

Quite a bit of the paint came off relatively easily wherever the wall is below grade and on an exterior wall. This is proof that the brick absorbs and releases moisture and moves enough to fracture the paint's bond. But the area where the brick had been repointed with cement mortar, and it wasn't exposed to mortar (party wall with our neighbor), that damn paint was like a friggen rock! I started by trying every different type of paint stripper. Peel Away, SmartStrip, Soy, Caustic, steam, heat, Infrared (Speed Heater), nothing worked! 

The strippers just make a mess at best, and I swear the heat and steam are just absorbed by the brick, making it so the paint never heats to the point it needs to release or soften. 

Eventually I just ended up using a good old hammer and 5-in-1 tool as a chisel along with the pull scrapers. 

Then I added a tool that worked really well to my arsenal. At the advice of several people on Instagram, including the guy who invented the tool itself, I picked up a Porter Cable Restorer. It's basically a handheld drum sander with different attachments and dust collection. 

Once I got the paint removal started, I grabbed this sander with the paint removal wheels to grind down/burn off any remaining paint. It worked really well, and is a tool I'm very glad to own now. They're also coming out with a Craftsman version of the tool with a new styling and more powerful motor, so be sure to keep your eyes open for it if you think it might work well for you.

As projects in our house tend to go, paint removal was slower than I expected. Our buckets of dry mortar arrived and Sean and his two other guys were slated to begin. I told them I wasn't as far along as I'd hoped, and if they didn't mind my working in their space while they worked, I was just going to keep moving along.

The next several days I worked on one side of the basement on paint and cement mortar removal, while they worked on the other walls on the repointing process. 

On my side of the equation I was using a Dewalt Rotary Hammer like a surgeon to carefully chisel away the solidly adhered cement mortar, which was fracturing the paint in large swaths. It was the best tool for the job by far, and beat the pants off of a brick hammer and pointing chisel. But it was loud and grueling work. I would cut a channel with the grinder and then chisel out the cement mortar with the hammer.

On the other side the guys were using various scraping tools as well as an angle grinder to cut away the old soft lime mortar. They were experts with the tool and there's little if any evidence of an errant grinder wheel hitting one of the bricks. Meanwhile, I kept working on my paint horror.

While I had repointed previously using a pointing trowel, it's slow work. The masons preferred to use a mortar bag to squeeze the mortar into the joint, and then strike the joint using a tool to give it the classic look of a concave joint. 

During the work, I introduced Sean's guys to an angle grinder repointer's dust shroud for the DeWalt angle grinders that facilitates dust collection and prevents the level of dust that's usually associated with messy repointing work. This is the shroud in action, where you'd normally see a spray is dust!

The shroud, coupled with a dust extractor vacuum, cuts down on a good 70%-90% of dust you'd normally see. I also figured out that the shroud, through not really meant to fit the smaller grinders, fits nicely if you remove one of the set screws on the grinder's locking collar.

Sean and his guys worked fast, and then caught up to me pretty quickly. the last day we were all working on the final wall at the same time. They were above me raking out the joints, raining a shower of lime mortar down on my head and hair while I was trying to remove the last of the paint I'd be able to get off. I'd long since given up on perfection and decided to embrace the remaining white paint as a level of character that will tell the story of our house for many years to come. 

I can't tell you how much I appreciated their willingness to let me be in their way and work with me on this project. They said they didn't mind, and even picked up a few ideas for tools they wanted to add to their approach to repointing, so that was cool as well.

Most people want to hire someone because they want to have the job done for them. For me, I want to do the job myself, but it's all about time. When I hire someone I want to be involved in the process to learn and experience. I know a lot of contractors don't like this and feel like they are being watched or slowed down. I also know that we sometimes pay a premium or "involved homeowner tax" for being involved, but I personally get so much more out of the process by being involved that it's well worth it to me. We'll eventually repoint something else in the future, and there's a good chance I'll use what I learned by working alongside Sean's guys, and I appreciate that.

After the repointing was done I had to keep the mortar wet, especially on the party wall, to ensure it didn't suck all of the moisture out of the mortar and cure too quickly. To keep water on the mortar I used a garden sprayer and walked the basement walls every hour spraying them all down. I did this as I could over the next two days and watched as the mortar slowly took on the light gray color we were expecting. 

The end result of our effort to remove the old paint and cement mortar, and Sean's team to repoint everything, is pretty spectacular. It may still be a basement, but I'd say it's a basement with some walls that have rather breathtaking character. 

We no longer have mortar crumbling and falling on the floor. Paint is no longer crumbling into our belongings. I look around this basement now and I see a space that will be an amazing space where we will create a lot of very cool things! 

Now we just need to take care of everything else that's needed before we can call this project done. What's that you say? Oh, how about...move plumbing, install boiler, radiant heat, insulate, move stuff five thousand times, laundry room, storage, work benches, tool storage, more work benches, omg we have so much to do! More in our next blog post...that will be in fewer than four months. :-)

We've been keeping people updated on a lot of our progress real time over on Instagram, so if you're on Instagram and don't follow us, be sure to add us to see all we're working on. We've also been adding a lot of tips and tricks via Instagram Stories. 

Also, this is not a paid advertisement or partnership or any sort. If you're in the DC area and are looking for a good mason, give Sean Moore at Moore Stone LLC a call. We can definitely recommend them.

And here are some links to the tools that we mentioned in this post that really helped the whole process. 

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As long as we've owned our homes we've always had a project list a mile long. Some of those projects are things we are going to work on in the near term, and some of those projects are things we dream about eventually tackling, but have no real concept if we'll actually get to that point. But if there's one thing you need to know about Wendy and me, when we set our minds to something, we don't like to stop driving toward that goal until we can make it happen.

Over the course of the summer, and now into this fall and winter, we've been planning and working on one of those projects we've always really wanted to take on, but weren't sure would ever happen. That project? A complete overhaul of our row house's dark, musty, dirty, crowded, and inefficient basement. You remember this gross space, right? The room in our house that could most easily pass for that of a hoarder's hideaway.

Back when we purchased our home we didn't have any sort of budget to put into the unfinished basement. The walls were covered in failing waterproofing paint, portions of exposed mortar were crumbling, and the ceiling height of the basement ranged from 6'11" at its tallest point in the center, to 6'3" at its shortest at the back wall. 

In order to get ourselves set up and working, we quickly built some shelves out of plywood and two by fours, and a workbench out of the same. Ever since, our basement has played triple duty as a storage area, laundry area, and our workshop. This triple play was less than ideal, essentially making the space fight over all three, doing none of the three particularly well. Not to mention that due to the shared space with the workshop, the storage and laundry areas were perpetually covered in a layer of saw dust. Needless to say, it was less than ideal.

Over this summer we needed to address some of the issues that have been impacting our basement, which included installing a French drain and sump pump to resolve periodic water infiltration following heavy rains, and correcting the out of level floor by working with a contractor to remove the old slab and pour the new. 

While we're at it, we're also removing the old and horribly inefficient forced air furnace. We're replacing it with a high efficiency boiler that will heat the first floor of our house with below floor radiant heat, and the second floor with a hydronic coil on our attic heat pump. We're looking forward to having a more efficient heating system, and the bonus is that switching over to radiant heat will free up a lot of space in the basement because the bulky ductwork is no longer needed. This is another project I've wanted to take on for about 10 years or so, and we're finally doing it! 

If you've been following us on Instagram, you've seen a few of our in progress shots that involve the restoration and repointing of the 130+ year old beautiful masonry walls. This is a tall task that involves stripping old Drylok waterproofing paint, removing some cement mortar from an old (and bad) repointing job, removing what appears to be plaster from other attempts at repointing, and generally trying to clean up all of the masonry.

Basement wall in 2003

This whole project has been a tremendously time consuming and exhausting undertaking. This, coupled with other projects and a very busy work schedule, have kept us pretty quiet on the blog the last several months. We're also working with a few contractors on this project, which is a bit outside of our norm. But if we want to get this done in a semi-reasonable amount of time, we've had to figure out what we should hire out vs. what we should take on ourselves. It wasn't an easy decision by any means, but working with a few good contractors that we know and trust certainly makes things much easier.

So, what's the plan? We're turning the basement into two truly separate areas. One third of the space will be a laundry and storage area for bulk grocery and cleaning supplies, a few of Wendy's real estate staging items and signs, and other household items that we want to keep clean. It will be separate from the workshop, away from the dust and grime that is unavoidable when working on projects. The other two thirds of the basement will be a real, actual workshop. The workshop space will be about 20'x14' and will house several moveable cabinet and workbench components that I plan on building over the next several months. 

The whole project is major and will take a good while to complete. Our goal is to keep you all updated as portions of the project progress. So, are you ready for the fun? While it's not your typical fancy Pinterest-worthy before and after kitchen or bath makeover, we can't wait for this project to come together. After all, this is a project we weren't sure would ever actually happen, so seeing it in the middle of the chaos is truly exciting! 

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Ever since we bought our house in 2003, we've been fighting a bit of a losing battle in our basement. This narrow but long space plays quintuple duty on a daily basis. Storage, laundry, utility room, server closet, and shop. Oh how we long for the early days of a nearly empty basement area.

Though it may have been virtually empty when we bought our home, we quickly took care of that quality of the space and built some shelving for storage and a little work bench from plywood and 2x4s.

 

In the years that followed we've ended up with so much stuff down there that, at times, we can't effectively get around without having to act like we're on American Ninja Warrior! Wendy accuses me of treating it as my hoarder's lair. At times, she's not entirely wrong.

Aside from all of the crap, the thing about this basement is that it's always been pretty dark. There are a few random bulbs and four mismatched 4' fluorescent tube lights that are run from two different switches. These switches are also inconveniently located at either end of the basement. It's a set up that's less than ideal, and the lights have this horribly annoying buzz that just.never.stops.

After we grew tired of the old school glass tubes flickering and dying, and then inevitably breaking them because I procrastinated taking them to the store for recycling (it happened twice, and was horrible both times), we wanted to upgrade things by adding some LED replacements. 

Unfortunately, these LED bulbs caused the transformers in two of the lights to constantly overheat and shut themselves off as a protective measure. Add to it that the LED bulbs I was using seemed to have a high failure rate...which means the pins broke after less than a year of use and threw me into a fit of irrational rage yelling. "THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO LAST FOR 30,000 HOURS!!! THIS IS SO MANY LESS HOURS THAN THAT!!!!"

Rather than continue to be frustrated by our dank basement with insufficient lighting, we determined it was about time for a little upgrade. We decided to buy eight 4' LED low profile lights from Hyperikon to replace the four fixtures already in place. 

We ordered the lights we're installing from Amazon, and all in we spent about $240 on the eight fixtures, which are all non-linking plugin models. There are a ton of options available on Amazon, but we went with these lights for several reasons. These were affordable models and the light output is more than sufficient at 100 watt equivalent, 3800 lumens, and a relatively warm color temperature of 4000K. 

We chose the plugin style fixtures knowing that it would allow us to move lights around in the future without much effort. Using wire ties to make sure any wires are nicely bundled and out of the way and we have a flexible and future-proof solution no matter what we do with the basement.

The lights themselves are LED strips protected by round plastic coverings. 

The whole fixture can be either hung form the ceiling or surface mounted with low profile clips. 

The first step in our new lighting game was to mount two of them in place so we wouldn't be working completely in the dark when we removed the old lights. For our purposes, we're mounting them directly to the underside of the exposed floor joists in the ceiling above, so it only required us to screw in the two clips and snap them in place. 

Install of these lights could not be easier. They snap right into the clips and all you have to do is to plug them in to fire them up.

With adequate partial lighting, the next step in our task was removing those old terrible florescent lights so we could install the six remaining new lights. These old lights were all poorly hung at various heights.

Besides the fact they were absolutely filthy, they also were either close to failure or had completely failed.

The old lights ran from the front to the back of the house, mounted across floor joists. With these new lights in place along the joists, the basement actually feels a little larger, and like the ceiling is higher. 

As I mentioned, the lights are 35 watts each and come in at 4000K, so their color temperature is pleasing and not too blue. I feel like any higher than 4000K just ends up feeling way too cold and unnatural. They're also rated for 50,000+ hours and come with a 5 year warranty. That sounds great and all, but the risk with LED lighting isn't that the LEDs will last, but that the circuitry will last. I'm hopeful that these lights will be the last we'll ever need to buy for the basement. With regular use, we're looking at about 20 years or so of life in these lights.

As part of the install process we also changed up the outlets in the ceiling that the lights plug into so that they're all on the same switch. Wait, one switch to turn all of the lights in the basement on and off? So I don't end up all of the way upstairs when I realize that the switch at the other end of the basement is still on and needs to be turned off? What a crazy idea!

We've had these lights in place for a little more than a week now and I can't believe how much it has improved the basement's usefulness. I can see the projects I'm working on so much better now and really look forward to spending time getting things done, even when it's completely dark outside. Honestly, I can't believe it took us this long to make this relatively simple improvement.

I do have to say, having this much light in the basement has me looking around and contemplating a major reorganization and rebuild to make this space a true shop. I'll have to convince Wendy, but maybe moving the washer & dryer, shrinking the storage, and finally removing the old and unused oil drum would give us the functional space I've wanted for a very long time. 

We've talked for a long time about finishing the basement, but I would hate to lose our very functional workspace. Maybe an update that's not quite a finish? The total space of the basement is 15' x 30', which would make a very functional (albeit narrow) shop space. What do you think?

At any rate, these new lights are a breath of fresh air here in the basement, and I'm so glad we made this relatively inexpensive change. It's probably a 2 out of 10 on the DIY difficulty scale, so if you've been procrastinating additional task/work lighting in your work space, the technology and price point is in the right place for you to finally take the plunge.

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The Hatfields had the McCoys, Aaron Burr had Alexander Hamilton, Ali had Frazier, Nikolai Volkoff had Hulk Hogan, England had George Washington, President Taft had a bathtub, Grumpy Cat has fun, and even Narcissus had Nemesis herself.

A great nemesis can frustrate, intimidate, infuriate, incite deep emotions, and elicit a visceral response from its counterpart unlike any other. Whether a worthy opponent and archrival, or an unwitting foe in an existence, the actions of a nemesis can result in anything from utter defeat to unbridled exuberance.

We're all likely familiar with the scene from A Christmas Story where Ralphie's dad weaves his "tapestry of obscenity" in his fight with his nemesis, the furnace.

For reasons unknown to me at the time, this scene of the movie particularly resonated with me. The look on the children's faces, the tenuous and deliberate manner of their movement as they stared wide eyed at the basement door and smoke spewing from the grate. It was all a simple case of foreshadowing for what would one day be my life. "It's a CLINKER!!!!"

The actor playing a nemesis in the play of my life? Our Maytag dryer.

Several months ago in my most recent round in our human vs. appliance heavyweight bout, I had to wrestle with our most poorly designed dryer after a severed drive belt left our clothes in a wet heap. Some have even speculated that the dryer sabotaged its own drive belt to be given an opportunity to draw blood from my hands. I'd say this postulation is far from a stretch.

Though I emerged victorious in my battle with few casualties, the war, as was proven this week, is far from over.

After loading in a wet pile of clothes fresh from the washer, I started the dryer and waited the prerequisite indeterminate amount of time until the dryer decided, in its professional opinion, the clothes were sufficiently dry. At which time, the dryer chimed its lovely digital alarm to alert me to the fact the clothes, according to the genius of the dryer's deeply flawed artificial intelligence, are ready to be folded. In a classic bait and switch, of course the clothes are almost always still damp. In fact, I typically have to repeat this process at two to three times before the clothes are actually dry.

I'm convinced the dryer is having fun at my expense, simply interested in seeing how many times it can make me walk down the basement stairs. Each time I start the dryer, an accompanying fist shake and obscene gesture is never far behind.

However, in this instance, even after four attempts at allowing our dryer to do its only job, our clothes were no closer to dry than in the minutes they were plucked from the neighboring, and equally infuriating washing machine.

Confused by the situation, and the failure of our dryer to do its ONE job, I began my troubleshooting process. 

I noticed no heat. Odd for a dryer, wouldn't you say? As with pretty much any problem like this, I obviously had to take the whole damn thing apart.

I quickly disassembled the dryer to have a look at it's disgusting and morally objectionable innards. I couldn't immediately identify anything particularly amiss, but I dug a little further. Unplugging the dryer at this stage is a must. It's a 220V appliance, and knowing how it has it out for me, I'm certain it could attempt to electrocute me until I was dead.

Looking at the exploded diagram for the dryer, I began to understand the basic idea. Air is pulled into the drum by the blower, and as the air is pulled in, it passes an electric heating element to warm the contents of the tumbler. Then there's a whole bunch of numbers, panels, and parts floating around the device that each have an equal chance of drawing my ire due to catastrophic failure.

I removed a few other screws to gain access to this heating element and immediately found the culprit. It seems the heating element coils (like a very high powered toaster) had fallen completely apart. I can only assume this is due to the acidic vitriol coursing through the veins of this mechanical beast, slowly eating itself form the inside like a parasitic machine. That or it's poorly made crap and fell apart after several years of use.

The metal springs were no longer completing a circuit, no longer heating, and the only conclusion I can draw is that the dryer was attempting to dry our clothes using the residual flames conjured up from the depths of hell where this dryer likely originated.

Using the same diagram, I determined the parts I'd need to replace the heating element and ordered them from Amazon. $83 down the tubes, but I look at it as money spent on supplies necessary to assert my dominance over household appliances. A wise investment for any household.

The new heating element arrived just the other day, and last night, dressed in purple and magenta camouflage socks, a festive green sweater, and red plaid flannel pajama bottoms (we really need to do a load of laundry), I decided to launch my all out assault on this adversary of clothes heating.

Disassembly of the dryer has become a thing of child's play for me. I know this dude inside and out at this point, but that doesn't seem to make my efforts any easier. Instead, I simply grow more annoyed.

In order to unhook the existing connection, I had to remove the lower panel on the back of the dryer, which exposed a shocking truth.

It seems to be the result of our feeble attempts to dry feather down pillows after a feline, who will remain nameless, decided to vomit on not one, but two of the pillows on our bed. In an attempt to resolve this issue through laundering, before ultimately tossing the soiled pillows in the trash, it seems one or both of the pillows sprung a leak. It looked like we were adopting the new "goose feather down dryer" hipster phase I believe is sweeping the nation.

Though I thought my project was on its way, I just couldn't get the damn electrical connection apart. It seemed the plastic clips had somehow been fused to one another using the sticky hatred this dryer has for me and my clothing as glue. The "easy connect" male and female connections had to be coerced apart using pliers!

After removing the heating element from the dryer, I could clearly see the bane of my basement. 

The old heating element was destroyed, and the new one looked ready to go.

Installation of the new heating element was much more straight forward than the removal, and I also vacuumed out the possible feather down fire hazard lurking in the depths of the dryer. I took the opportunity to also clean the exhaust pipe of any lint that's been able to bypass what may be the single least effective lint trap in the history of laundry devices.

Upon reassembly I plugged the dryer in again, begrudgingly returning my arch enemy to life. Immediately upon activating the dryer the heating element began glowing bright orange-red, which in this case, did not represent the fires of hell reclaiming one of its own across the River Styx, but instead the color of victory.

I reassembled the various pieces of the dryer and relished in the spoils of battle by warming my cold hands agains the tumbling glow within. I had emerged from the treacherous grounds of basement warfare with a functional dryer, newfound confidence, and nervous anticipation that the next wet load of laundry could conceivably be rendered dry in under three and a half hours.

As I exited the basement in my outfit that made me look like a mentally unstable Scottish Christmas elf, I glanced over my shoulder and shot a knowing glance at my arch enemy. I know this isn't the last battle the two of us will have, or even the most eventful, but my ice cold glare told that damned dryer one thing and one thing only. It doesn't matter how many times we might battle, I will surely win the war.

When I materialized from the basement I was greeted by my trusty steed, Lulu. I had battled my clinker and I had won. She jumped on and licked me to welcome my return. Lulu knew that not only had I won my fight, but it meant she would be able to bury herself in piles of freshly warmed laundry once again. It's the little victories in life that make all of the difference.

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