We went to Lowes yesterday and got 5 gallons of ugl drylock and a bottle of pretreat.
Pat had to take Kay to the dentist this morning so I spent time programming some new cctv cameras. I got one of them installed.

I bought six of these cameras, should cover the place well.
Then I went to the coal room and started grinding the walls with a drill and wire cup,

Then I remembered that I had a much bigger wire cup that would fit my angle grinder, so I cut loose with that, there was a cloud of dust so bad I couldn't see what I was grinding, so I ground by braille. After about ½ an hour I had to take a break, then we vacuumed the walls and floor.

For reference the lower blocks were ground in this pic. We were removing what they called effervescence, the pretreat said to remove as much as we could, then we will need to wash the walls with the pretreat and a steel brush then rinse well. I had to quit because it was getting hard to breathe.
So a very long shower, a glass of Ice water, and a recliner were prescribed.
Tomorrow I'll look at it and decide what the next step is.