Looking Up

 

There is nothing drastically wrong with the photo above. This is a basement ceiling in a circa 1930's house that will never have a "finished" basement. That isn't going to stop me though.

 

I intend on making this one of the nicest "unfinished" basements in town. (Well at least on my block) Since I am planning on painting the ceiling instead of hanging drywall, this could technically be left as is. That's not good enough for me though.

 

It was a pretty simple process to fix this, and the clips were reused in other areas where it would be harder to remedy. In those areas I used clips to secure wires without basement termination points and the ice maker and dishwasher water supply lines at every joist. (Yes, I could have diconnected the wires at the main box to feed through holes, but the box scares me.)

Ultimately my goal is for the ceiling to draw as little attention to itself as possible. Once I am finished with all of the streamlining of wires and pipes, my final step before paint will be to clean the joists of 80 years of cobwebs and dust. I'm hopefully only a couple of weeks away from that.

I've been reusing as much as possible. I am also going through the shelves again looking for items to sell on Craigslist to offset the costs. I am guessing I will be using a minimum of 20 gallons of paint to thoroughly cover the ceiling and walls. I'm lucky that I will be using a sprayer and not doing it by hand! I'm also clearing as much off the shelves as I can so, that when it comes time to paint I will have less to move and store elsewhere.