Sealing the ductwork

When I ripped down all the walls I discovered the ductwork was barely held together, and when they'd finished the basement, it wasn't just the electrical work that they did a horrible job on. Most of the new ducts that were added on were barely connected, and the standard duct tape that they'd wrapped around to fix the gaps had dried out and wasn't doing any good.
I'd used the proper metal tape on the joints between the 6" diameter ductwork, but for the connections to the main duct, that wasn't really feasible - so I used mastic and fiberglass mesh tape to seal up the gaps. In some cases, I had to screw the 6" elbows into the main duct as well to secure them.

before - with some nice gaps.

Some mesh tape added where the biggest gaps are.

Smearing on the mastic via gloves.

So far, sealing up all the gaps seems to have helped. Although it hasn't really been that cold to test out. It definitely won't hurt things.

New Walls Part 1

Finally got to the point where I could start working on putting up the new walls in the exercise room. I cleared up all the walls first, and glued 1" R5 rigid insulation to the walls. I made sure to use Loctite Power Grab which is safe to use on foam. After I glued it to the concrete I taped up all the seamed with IPG red seam sealer tape. Got it from amazon and it works great. Uber sticky. It keeps the moisture barrier intact. After that I used expandable foam around the bottom and tops to seal those gaps. I could have used caulk instead, but some of the gaps were a little too big.

before

after!

before

after!

Junction box hell

I'll have to compile some pictures of the ceiling/wall destruction, but here's a nice collection of the horrible wiring in the basement.

Box 1: Trapped in hallway outside bathroom.

Box 2: Close to the main breaker. Eventually hits box 1. 

In the laundry room.

1 in 1 out. Apparently they pieced together some short lengths.

This is definitely different. Never know when you might need a plug in the ceiling.

Main reason why I started ripping down the ceilings.

Not connected to anything - and yeah, it's live.

So, I still have a little bit of the ceiling in the living room to remove, so there may be more crappy fire hazards, but that's a good collection of wiring to fix. Most of them span some long lengths too, so it's not going to be an enjoyable task figuring out where they all head and fixing them.

We have light

Slow going on the new room construction as I've found the electrical situation in the basement is a nightmare, and thus, I'm pretty much tearing out all the ceilings and some walls to rerun the electrical wiring. Before all that I did install the new lights for the exercise room. At first I installed 4 but then realized it wasn't going to be enough light. The "light formula" didn't really work (room width x length x 1.5 = total wattage of light for room). I worked out that 4 60 watt bulbs would be sufficient, but it definitely wasn't.

First attempt with only 4 lights.

Also - I wanted to get a recessed light that wasn't overly "spot-lighty." That's a technical term... After getting the cheapest ecosmart led ones, I traded them in for commercial electric ones. As the recessed light cans I got were also 6" commercial electric ones - the led lights I got were specially made and pretty slick. Instead of just screwing in like the ecosmart ones, they were actually recessed lights and had the proper metal wire catches at the sides, so the lights would slide up into the housing and flush against the ceiling.

Nice and bright!

Electrical Work

Worked on fixing a bunch of horrible wiring that wasn't up to code. For whatever reason, the outlets weren't showing that they were properly grounded, and I had an inaccessible junction box hidden in the ceiling with 4 romex cables jammed into it.
Could have sworn I took more "before" photos, but here's the full shot of wiring before. You can see the metal junction box in the ceiling. It connected to the upstairs outlet, the room outlet, the bathroom outlet, and the room light switch. I still can't imagine why they did this.

Close up of their handywork. Probably why the grounding was screwed up. Was just waiting to start a fire or short out if anything loosened up....

So, after I ripped everything out, I ran all new romex (12 gauge). I ran the cable from the source of power, which was the upstairs outlet. So... from the upstairs outlet, to the room outlet, to the bathroom outlet, to the bathroom switches, to the room switch. Here's a look at the after.

As I had to pull romex from one floor to the other, through the wall, I had to cut an access hole in the outlet in the master bedroom that fed the rest of the power to the downstairs room and bathroom.

Holiday Lull

Didn't really do anything on the house for months during the holidays, so I started off with a bang. I've been wanting to start on one of the rooms downstairs but didn't really have a clear idea or inspiration on what to do and what room to attack first. Well, inspiration hit, so I began demolition on my exercise room to remove the existing closet and strip back the walls so I can properly insulate it, tape and insulate the heating ducts, fix electrical, and the like.

Start of demo. Closets space still there.

Found a fossilized buddy in the ceiling space.

Demo mostly finished. Tons of junk to still haul out.

Kitchen Windows

Got the last of all the new windows installed in the first floor. Definitely made a difference in sound and with keeping the heat inside being Autumn now. Here's a look at the progression of the kitchen windows, from before to after with the new blinds installed. I would have liked to have used the old blinds as they were still decent, but they ended up being too wide to fit and too much work to cut down.

Before I bought the house.

After I stripped the drywall and tile sill, new windows installed.

After the new wood sill, surround and moulding installed and finished.

All done with new blinds installed.

With closed blinds. Got eggshell color to mix it up.