Underground excavation continues. We are digging out the floor by a few inches so that a 6 mil plastic sheeting can go down over the dirt and then pea stone laid over top of that. The garage will be very neat and tidy looking after that (and after I take all the hazardous materials to be recycled.) We've actually moved from the garage to the basement portion and I found all sorts of things there that need to be recycled. Below is my dump pile, minus the sink, which we can use as a utility sink in the basement once it gets all nice looking! Depending on dampness, we may put the washer dryer down there since we never made room for them in our plan upstairs. If we do that, the sink might be a nice touch. Everything underneath the house that could be rusty, was rusty. The condensation problem is a bit daunting, but I hope the plastic and stone route will cut that down tremendously.
The most interesting find was the 50 gallon cement mixer that was crusted with old cement on the inside and looked to be a few decades old. I tried to get rid of it fast on Craig's list, but lost patience and took it to the scrap metal pile.
All of this stuff (including a vintage "STOP" sign) was crammed into a corner of the basement and sitting on about 50 cement blocks that were embedded in the dirt. I moved all the blocks out and we will backfill in here and level it out for the pea stone. I am using the blocks to build a kneewall that separates the usable basement space from the unexcavated space filled with boulders and other debris. It's not a real wall, but just stacked blocks that just tidy up the space. It runs three blocks high right in front of the boulder you see to the right in the picture below. By adding a layer of plastic and then pea stone, we will triple our storage space in this room and we will make the garage a usable space.
In our original budget plan, I budgeted $1000 to fix up and pour a slab in this area and in the garage....by doing it this way, I am cutting that figure in half at least. Because I did not want to dig, I hired someone to do it for $10 an hour. The sheeting costs a lot less than I thought and the pea stone should run us a couple of hundred bucks. To clean out and recycle all the old stuff from underneath the basement cost me a total of $8.00. I would like new garage doors, which we did not budget for, so at the end of the project, if there is money left over, that is where I would like it to go.
The most interesting find was the 50 gallon cement mixer that was crusted with old cement on the inside and looked to be a few decades old. I tried to get rid of it fast on Craig's list, but lost patience and took it to the scrap metal pile. 
All of this stuff (including a vintage "STOP" sign) was crammed into a corner of the basement and sitting on about 50 cement blocks that were embedded in the dirt. I moved all the blocks out and we will backfill in here and level it out for the pea stone. I am using the blocks to build a kneewall that separates the usable basement space from the unexcavated space filled with boulders and other debris. It's not a real wall, but just stacked blocks that just tidy up the space. It runs three blocks high right in front of the boulder you see to the right in the picture below. By adding a layer of plastic and then pea stone, we will triple our storage space in this room and we will make the garage a usable space.
In our original budget plan, I budgeted $1000 to fix up and pour a slab in this area and in the garage....by doing it this way, I am cutting that figure in half at least. Because I did not want to dig, I hired someone to do it for $10 an hour. The sheeting costs a lot less than I thought and the pea stone should run us a couple of hundred bucks. To clean out and recycle all the old stuff from underneath the basement cost me a total of $8.00. I would like new garage doors, which we did not budget for, so at the end of the project, if there is money left over, that is where I would like it to go.
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