In the Beginning was the need…

A portion of my professional practice is the recordation of historic properties.  This work is large format 4x5, and is most often contact printed on Kodak Azo paper.  Some projects even end up in the Library of Congress.

A dark bathroom and a bathtub suffice to produce contacts.  I have lost track of how many negatives have been developed in a hotel bathtub after a day of shooting.  But to do enlargements…  In the recent past I was able to squeeze a Durst Laborator 1200 into a corner of the bathroom, with very mediocre results.  And this was it until we moved in August, 2004.

One more house and I am going to scream

I figured that the next time moving and a box and myself were involved, I would be in it and six people would be moving it.  This began the search for a house that had office and darkroom space, preferably in a basement for the latter.  After looking at thirty some houses, we finally found a winner.  And, oh yes, it had what my wife was looking for too.

It had everything.  A full basement, and a double garage because I am bitten by several of the other male space consuming hobbies as well.  And it all seemed perfect until…

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain…

Apologies to John Fogarty.  This is the smallest section of a divided basement.  The previous owner left a sump pump.  When it started to rain, it was put to good use.  Here are the photos of the future darkroom area.  Sometimes it flooded worse, leaving several inches of water on both ends.:

Two headaches conspired together here.  The previous owner’s first attempt to solve the water problem involved pouring the entire basement floor with eight inches of concrete.  Needless to say this did not help the floor to ceiling height of the basement.  Nor in the long run did it solve the water infiltration.

The second attempt involved a B-Dry perimeter drainage system.  This took care of the worst of it, but allowed water to come in along an interior wall joint, and through the new cracks in the floor.  These of course were caused by the additional weight of the new concrete causing the foundation to settle.  Much air hammer chipping and flexible sealant later the basement dried out.  Time to solve: five months because it kept raining and was never dry long enough to seal.

Pardon my dust

The next steps were to Dry-Loc the walls and floor, re-arrange the central air and heating ductwork, and to add the electrical system.  Some things are simpler than others, and the entire area soon turned into a construction zone filled

with tools and other paraphernalia. 

What other sort of adventures?  Continued on the next page.

Icons courtesy of Leo’s Icon Archive

http://www.iconarchive.com/

Pages © 2004, 2005 Patrick Thrush