Feltwell
Member
- Messages
- 6,367
- Location
- Shropshire, England
I decided to spruce up my cellar, prior to it entering service as a stock room for my new business. Most of the stuff down there had not not moved since we moved in 16 years ago, so a big clear out was in order! It's not a large cellar, 8' x 12', but it has got the advantage of a reasonable ceiling height, about 6'6", plus natural light and ventilation from a window out onto our driveway.
The cellar was painted in the usual horrible plastic paint before, which was blowing and failing. Still took ages to scrape all the walls to get the loose stuff off though! I then painted it with Keim Optil paint - good stuff, great opacity, you could almost get away with 1 coat even over the dark brick. Dries to a very matt finish. The grey stripe at the bottom was the result of me chucking a bottle of black colourant into the leftover white paint, rather than buying another tub.
Cast iron window needed restoring (detailed on another thread). The cellar steps were full of active furniture beetle in places - as advised by Matt Green ages ago, really a cellar is the only place where spraying insecticide is justified, as you just can't dry the wood out enough to kill the little blighters. Anywhere else in the house, just sort the damp and no nasty chemicals required. So, I gave it 2 good soakings with woodworm killer, then painted it all white with Bedec MSP, with plenty of coats to fill in all the flight holes - make it obvious later in the year if I haven't managed to kill all the little blighters.
The floor is knackered, but I decided to leave it - it still functions, and the effort to dig it all out, limecrete then tile is just not worth it right now. Current floor is quarries straight onto earth, the earth has heaved a lot, the outside edge is a good 2" lower than the rest of the floor. The cellar flooded once, 15 years ago when we had major flooding all around us - only to a depth of about 2" though, just the water table had risen so high. One advantage of the current floor is water drains away through it very quickly, I washed the floor with my pressure washer and the water was all gone within 10 minutes. I built a paving slab up on small brick piers for our freezer to sit on, and all my stock will be sat on plastic shelving units that keeps it at least 4" off the floor - more for air circulation than anything else, I think the flooding was truly exceptional.
With new LED lighting, and the Optil paint really bouncing the light around, it's much better down there now.
Before 'n' afters!
I can't paint the back of the cellar door - at every kid's birthday we open it out into the hallway and record their height!
The cellar was painted in the usual horrible plastic paint before, which was blowing and failing. Still took ages to scrape all the walls to get the loose stuff off though! I then painted it with Keim Optil paint - good stuff, great opacity, you could almost get away with 1 coat even over the dark brick. Dries to a very matt finish. The grey stripe at the bottom was the result of me chucking a bottle of black colourant into the leftover white paint, rather than buying another tub.
Cast iron window needed restoring (detailed on another thread). The cellar steps were full of active furniture beetle in places - as advised by Matt Green ages ago, really a cellar is the only place where spraying insecticide is justified, as you just can't dry the wood out enough to kill the little blighters. Anywhere else in the house, just sort the damp and no nasty chemicals required. So, I gave it 2 good soakings with woodworm killer, then painted it all white with Bedec MSP, with plenty of coats to fill in all the flight holes - make it obvious later in the year if I haven't managed to kill all the little blighters.
The floor is knackered, but I decided to leave it - it still functions, and the effort to dig it all out, limecrete then tile is just not worth it right now. Current floor is quarries straight onto earth, the earth has heaved a lot, the outside edge is a good 2" lower than the rest of the floor. The cellar flooded once, 15 years ago when we had major flooding all around us - only to a depth of about 2" though, just the water table had risen so high. One advantage of the current floor is water drains away through it very quickly, I washed the floor with my pressure washer and the water was all gone within 10 minutes. I built a paving slab up on small brick piers for our freezer to sit on, and all my stock will be sat on plastic shelving units that keeps it at least 4" off the floor - more for air circulation than anything else, I think the flooding was truly exceptional.
With new LED lighting, and the Optil paint really bouncing the light around, it's much better down there now.
Before 'n' afters!
I can't paint the back of the cellar door - at every kid's birthday we open it out into the hallway and record their height!
