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Hi,

We want to make our cellar into a less dusty and grimy place and am looking for suggestions. We have a cement floor (unsealed) and stone walls (also unsealed) and exposed beams so that you can see the floor boards above you. We don’t want to spend tons of money as we use the cellar for storage and laundry machines (which one day we will likely move) but would like to remove the grit that builds up on everything down there. We already use de-humidifiers in the summer as it gets damp, but not actually wet.

Is there any downside to sealing the floor and the walls? We had a flood once (a hose broke when we were out of town) and the water just seeped down into the cement so we assume that one downside of sealing would be that water would have to be pumped out if it flooded again. Anything else? Could sealing hurt the stone walls?

Also we thought about installing some sheetrock on the ceiling between the beams (the ceiling is too low to sheetrock under the beams). We could not do it everywhere due to pipes but it could at least improve the situation. Any other suggestions for the ceiling?

Any thoughts on any of the above would be great. Also, if anyone knows of a person who might take on this type of a job, please send recommendations as well.

Thanks!