Storm Shelter

竜巻が通る地域に越してきたので、我が家にはストームシェルターがあります。地下室の一番奥深い部分にある、畳2畳ぐらいのいわば物置みたいな部屋です。小汚いし、暗いし、大昔の牢屋みたいなだったので、ペンキ塗ってきれいにしました。

When I was looking for a house in the Deep South, I was surprised how many houses had a storm shelter. I never lived in the area that needed a storm shelter so it was a new thing for me. There are many earthquakes in Japan but there is no prior warning for earthquakes so a shelter is useless, there are hurricanes in the coastal South but a storm shelter is probably an overkill, then there is almost no natural disaster in the Desert Southwest or in England.

Anyway, now we have one. It's a very narrow, unfinished room with a heavy door in the deepest part of the basement. It originally looked like a windowless prison cell from the 1920s. Dark, dusty, and cold.

Since we are in the tornado season, we wanted to make this room a bit more "habitable" so we switched a light bulb to an LED light, sealed the cinder brick wall with Drylok and painted with a semi-gloss paint, and Epoxied the floor with freckles.

Really happy how it turned out. Nice clean room. We just need a couple of chairs and a 72-hour kit.