"I should have painted the concrete walls for some reason" Painting it a lighter color than the blocks does tend to 'brighten' the room. Basements often have limited natural light and lighter colored walls can help with limited overhead light.

Desalad, I'm surprised that you are unable to access my photos. You should be able to open the albums by clicking on the title picture. Try this address, it is the direct one. www.community.webshots.com/user/forroberts For access, I created a small closet where my electrical entrance is located and the ceiling inside is open. Same with the closets which are behind the Frence Doors. Because water and electrical conduit were already suspended below the joists, I attached 2 x 4's to the joists in order to hang the drywall - thus the 1.5" clearance should anything need to be installed in the future. If access to the photos is still blocked by your computer check your browser settings or let me know and I'll try to get them to you. Good Luck, Forrest

Most people in Florida have glass block windows in their concrete block homes. The windows are installed using cement. My home is 10 years old and has gone through 3 cat. 1 hurricanes. No leaks, no nothing. The outside windows, in fact, are not glass--they are some sort of tough plastic that withstands winds and rain better than glass and won't normally break. Go figure! The real glass blocks are on an inside wall.

That consists of vertical rebars in some of the cavities. These cavities are then filled with a flowable grout rather than concrete or mortar so that the entire core is completely filled without voids. So if I'm reading this correctly, not all the voids need to be filled, only certain ones. Right? The material used did look more like grout than a high sump concrete as I had envisioned. The reinforcing should meet the minimum requirements of the building code or what an engineer specifies. There are no building permits required in my neck of the woods; therefore no inspections by anyone other than myself, husband and GC. We (hubby and I) have no experience with CMU, so I'm trying to educate myself on the fly since I had assumed they wold be filling all voids. Whatever block they already filled they did that for tone reason or another and it's probably per plan detail, like piers, first-course block, etc The bock fill isn't specified on any of the plans. Building permits are not req'd here, so the plans don't show as much info as they would if we were in a larger metro area.