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			CRAZY GUN Wires and pipes and other such things pass through the new walls in the basement. The walls were framed with rough openings (2x4s) with ample room around the pipes. The drywall was then cut around these openings. The idea was then to come in with finished wood frames then thin plywood covers would be fit over the covers and pipes (more of this will make sense later). This guns looking thing is one such frame. It took quite the cutting and hassle to get just right. It sits above the bathroom door. There's the AC line running from the furnace to the condenser, as well as water lines going through the space. It was quite the tight opening.
			CLEAN OUT Access to the wasteline cleanout. You can see the frames here. Instead of using finished wood as I had originally planned, I used 2x lumber which I cut down. At this point, using materials I had already paid for was much preferable to using materials that would still need to be paid for. If you look close, you can see how I couldn't figure out how to cut the drywall cleanly around the opening.
			GUN GOES INTO PLACE Here you can see the "gun" frame in place. It had to be glued in place (go liquid nails). You can't quite see the refridgerant line running to the exterior condenser.
			BATHROOM OPENINGS A view of the openings in the rear of the bathroom.
			RACEWAY COVERS Each cover for the wire raceway in the TV area had to be cut individually. The ceiling is partly non-square along with my construction being not square.
			STAIR The stair starts to become more monolithic. I caulked the joint between the wood stair and drywall.
			ANOTHER WALL OPENING Above the future microwave and on the other side of the stair. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I laid out the opening. Much too small really. Note the copper water line next to the electric lines.
			CLEANOUT Look at that fancy cleanout. Lets keep our fingers crossed that we don't have to get in there to send the snake down the hole.
			"GUN" REVISITED The black line is the refridgerant line. It curves through the opening at a slim angle.
			WALL OPENING The covers for the openings are 1/8" masonite. I cut out the receiving portion of the frame so that the cover, frame and wall are all flush. So in the comers, I filled in the holes with squares of masonite (and like snowflakes, no two squares were exactly the same size).
			ANOTHER OPENING It's nice to see the walls cleaning up. Though the framing up of the openings took quite a few nights to complete. Plus, it wasn't that big of a noticeable difference. But it was nothing compared to cleaning up the ceiling.
			BLACK MOLD I was cleaning up this part of the wall as the paint was flaky. I noticed that the drywall was pretty soft. So I poked at it, and then started hammering at it. Ten minutes later I had this. Black mold. And, as a bonus, this vintage shirt. Thankfully there were no bones that followed it out of the wall. Though, the shirt was creepy enough.
			BLACK MOLD 2 Things are cleaned up here. But the wood is still black with nastiness.
			WALL COVERS The access holes that I cut all through the drywall. All nice and clean looking. I was a little surprised at how smooth it came off.
			BLACK MOLD 3 On closer inspection, I needed to take some more drywall out. Originally I tried to keep the outlet on the other side of the wall in place. But I had to knock out some more drywall.
			BLACK MOLD 4 You can see the outlet dangling there. That's the outlet for the dust collection system (dedicated circuit). Also notice that it's an "old-work" outlet. No need for that now.
			NO MORE BLACK MOLD Notice how clean the wood got. Like new again. I used a thinned out bleach and sprayed it on the wood. Then I wiped it off with paper towels, and hit it with some more bleach. I let it dry for a day, I think. Then it was time for fresh drywall to be tossed on the wall.
			WHY BOTHER CUTTING A CLEAN LINE It made it more of a challenge to cut and scribe the covering piece of drywall.
			OTHER SIDE This was a week diversion in the schedule. My post-Christmas schedule was heavily aggressive at best. I missed the opening weekend of the basement by a few weeks. But since no invitations were sent out (and certainly none were accepted), it didn't matter too much.
			UGH I'm not sure why a part of the basement had busted up drywall around some of the HVAC penetrations, but I still had to patch them. You can see the efforts to patch it using drywall. It was clear that I wouldn't be able to make the precision cuts necessary. So I turned to rigid insulation and then sheet metal.
			LONGSHOT OF UGH
			MORE CEILING WORK To the left is a drywall fix, to the right is another hole I had to fix.
			WALL PENETRATION Look at that nice clean hole. Notice the copper water line heading up to the ice maker.
			RIGID INSULATION Strikes again! I used it to fill the gap below the return air duct. It holds drywall compound well. I recommend it.
			OVERALL SHOT It's starting to come together...
			DUST I'm glad that I picked up the 30 percent less dust compound. Because I can't imagine how far that stuff would have spread had I not had it.