Over the weekend Mike repacked the trench he cut and cleaned up all the dirt. It was pretty bad to begin with, so it could only get better. This is one of those times that I'm thankful Mike doesn't stop projects until he's done. We didn't have to live with this for very long:
Before he cleaned it up to look like this:
After it was cleaned, Mike wasted no time filling it with concrete. This picture is blurry, (you know by now that Mike doesn't pose for me and I'm left with blurry action shots), but I added it so that you can see the set up. Just a man in his pajamas, with a wheel barrel and a purple bucket.
I offered to help, (actually I offered to trade my labor to the neighbors to help them paint in exchange for the husband to come over to help Mike), but Mike said it was actually easier to do with just one man because he could work at his pace and control the amount of concrete so that he didn't make too much or too little.
He ended up completing it in one evening, just making one bag at a time and dumping it in the trench, then troweling it out for a smooth finish.
A couple photos up you can see all the bags of concrete Mike bought, (then had to haul downstairs). He estimated 20 bags and only needed 10. He's usually closer than that, but he estimated a uniform depth throughout the entire trench, but some spots were deeper and most were more shallow. We took the rest back for a refund, but the total for all 20 bags was only about $60, so for a $30 refund Mike had to carry a couple hundred pounds of concrete mix back upstairs. After he was done he might have made a comment that $30 wasn't worth it. Then he rested and came back to his frugal senses.
We've been mostly living away from the basement since we've started, so it wasn't that hard to stay away for a couple days to allow the concrete to cure enough to walk around on.
We've even started storing stuff on it, like here in the bathroom, while we prep for the leveling.
Before the patch in the laundry room harden too much, Mike placed the utility sink where he wanted it and pushed it in. Since the floor was so uneven, we've lived with the sink rocking back and forth. Now it's not going anywhere.
The other night Mike and I actually went down and measured the floor and created a little topography map in order to estimate how much self-leveling concrete we need to level the floor. We've actually determined it's not as bad as we originally thought. Only about a 7' x 7' area is really bad, (the room slopes down at the cleanout plug) and we've been going back and forth about the best option to handle the leveling. It's a really expensive process and we're hoping we do it right. We've actually got some manpower coming to help this weekend, so I'm hoping they knock it out and we're able to lay our laminate flooring (which we've already ordered and will be picked up soon), in the next week or so!
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