the basement is so scary...

...that our neighbor said that she was interested in buying the house (and flipping it) until she saw the basement...

and that is saying something, cause the rest of the house was pretty nasty!

so we have to do something about it.

we already solved the water issue, by extending the downspouts (the basement has been dry ever since).
so the next problem to tackle is the stair.

this is the rickety stair to the dungeon. what you can't see in the photo is the entire stair pitches drastically to the left.

there is a landing at the top of the stair (about 36" x 36") and there is a landing at the bottom of the stair...kind of

if we frame out the concrete foundation wall to install the drywall (losing about 4" from the "landing), then the stair will basically slam right into the wall.  we looked at raising the level of the landing to the next step up, but we just dont have the headroom.

so that leads us to CHANGE ORDER NO. 001 (who said there were no change orders on this job?)

we are going to relocate the first floor door that leads to the basement stair so that we can remove the top stair landing and push the entire stair closer toward the center of the house-- in order to gain space at the bottom of the stair. 

here is the old basement plan:

we have to remove the existing paneling and partitions- there was such a history of water in this basement, that the bottom 4"-6" of wood and framing is rotten...and there is mold on the drywall.

so here is the new plan:

the plan is to use pressure treated lumber and mold resistant drywall- just in case.