Reloading/Gun room on the horizon

[kjohn]

My wife and I are renovating the house I was raised in. My Dad built it in 1949. I was 1 1/2 years old when we moved in. Long story short, I own it now. It is 24X32, and has a second story with two good sized bedrooms up there. The basement is full size, except for a cistern, which is a bit less than 8' x 24'. Voila!! Gun room!!

A friend and I cut through the friggin' cement walls (approx. 9" thick) on Sunday. I made the opening 40". I still have to knock the opening out, as we couldn't cut all the way through. The good part is the floor of the cistern is about 14" lower than the rest of the basement, so the wall height is at least 8'. The basement has never leaked, nor has the cistern. I had to leave about a 4.5" lip at the bottom of the opening, so flooding shouldn't be a problem.

I can't wait to start working on the room, but I have to get other things done first. Finally, I will be able to have all my gun stuff in one room, have my rifles properly racked, have my reloading stuff all ready to go, and actually have a place where I can clean a gun!! The room seems to be huge right now, but I'm sure it will shrink as I start putting my stuff in.

If anybody has any suggestions, ideas, cautions, experiences, feel free to wade in.

 

[Splatter]

Dampness would be your only worry right now. you need to find/borrow a dehumidifier and see if it can pull any water out of the air.
It might feel dry;but check before you risk good steel.

 

[kjohn]

Yes. Good point. The house we rent right at the moment has a crawl space instead of a basement. When we moved in 3 1/2 years ago, it smelled musty. The owner bought a dehumidifier for us. We ran it in the kitchen for a few days and took an amazing amount of water out of the air. I put it down in the crawl space and hooked the discharge to the sewage pipe. No more smell!! I will definitely be dealing with that first, after I get a door hacked in! The concrete is still standing and will require some more bashing to break it down. Thanks for the tip!!