Project Basement - Day 4 - Cutting the Slab

This is taken with the outside door to the basement behind me - I'm facing west. See that dark spot in the middle of the photo? That's a 7 foot long by 11 or so foot wide cut that Mike made in the concrete slab in the foundation. As it turns out, the sewer line comes out of the south side of the house, which means that we'll be able to easily tie the kitchen drainage into the sewer. We'll also be able to rough in a wet bar area, which will be great. The latest mystery is that it's not clear where the water coming into the sump pump tank area is coming from. The cleanouts (the white plastic piping that sticks out of the ground) are dry and yet there's water coming in to the sump pump. The other interesting ah-ha is that some previous owners, whoever put in the sump pump, actually poured over the existing basement drain. Don't really get that. Mike is going to do some exploratory surgery tomorrow around the stack and the sump pump, and he'll continue to cut a line in the slab heading south towards the kitchen drain, and may start cutting down the foundation to the level of the new basement entry door.

Eric & Tim made a bunch of progress today on the electrical side of things - it's a bit crazy around the house right now with the fridge in the middle of the kitchen and the TV cabinet in the middle of the living room, limited electricity in the bedroom and random outages around the house, but it's all in the name of a SOLID new wiring system. Heidi thought she had escaped the last bit of major upstairs dust with my closet project so this was a bit of a surprise. :)

More to come tomorrow and then the weekend... 

Day 3 cont'd

This is taken facing southeast from the northwest corner of the basement. I'm basically standing in the corner of the house where the music studio used to be. You can see the door leading to the upstairs. Things are definitely coming along and the slate is almost blank so Mike can begin working the Mad Dog magic.

So the really good news is that the foundation question seems to be put to bed. Mike is going to do as he said, 'pinning' the old foundation and pouring 6" of new concrete around the interior. He's then going to cut the concrete floor around the perimeter (every 6' or so) to support the posts which will hold up the new walls and bear some of the support of the house. This solves the structural goal of having enough support to add a story somewhere down the road, and clearly solves the waterproofing concerns.

Next steps: tomorrow Mike is going to begin jackhammering and cutting the foundation where necessary (he still needs to cut the existing foundation for the new windows). In addition to the window, he'll be cutting/jackhammering for the posts on the perimeter and beneath the main beam of the house where the new interior wall will go - those are to add depth to the concrete to bear extra weight. He'll also be cutting around the existing stack; we're all kind of curious where the sewer line comes out of the house as it doesn't appear to be in public records. If the sewer line actually comes out of the south side of the house then we will probably have Ron (plumber) rough in for a wet bar on the south side of the house in the soon to be family room. 

Project Basement - Day 3

So I got home today and this was the view leading to my basement. Just above my head to the right side and immediately above my head are two 12" holes in the Sheetrock where electrician Eric and his co-worker Tim began the challenging (to me) task of wiring the house for linked smoke detectors. We're going to have detectors in every room in the house, including the stairwell to the upstairs and the upstairs itself. Since they'll all be part of the same system, if one goes off, they'll all go off, which the insurance company should like. The hole in the wall in the picture was cut so Eric could access some of the wiring that Mike needs cleared out. Tallie the cat immediately jumped from the stairs into the hole. She's at the bottom of the picture.

Day 2 cont'd

This is taken facing west with the door to the outside behind me and the sump pump just to my right. Having revealed the west foundation, which had the same kind of patchwork as the N/S/E, I asked Mike if he thought it made sense to re-do just the North/South walls. My concern was that we may make the place structurally solid and waterproof on the N/S sides, but leaving the E/W sides still open to potential leakage. Not ideal. Mike had a great suggestion. Given that the foundation has a footer that sticks out 6" from the existing wall, he suggested 'pinning' rebar into the existing foundation horizontally, and boxing in the entire foundation with vertical rebar as well, then pouring concrete, essentially adding 6" to the existing concrete - all but eliminating water as a concern on all four sides. He promised to check on the possibility of that alternative - to see if it would still handle our structural concerns.

Project Basement - Day 2

I took this photo (facing west with the furnace behind me) when I got home from work. Mike & Edgar had removed what was formerly the wall(s) of the music studio. Apparently the owners before us had done a pretty solid job on the room - they had screwed their foam insulation to the studs using a 16" spread, and THEN they screwed the Sheetrock to the insulation and studs. So basically there were twice as many screws as there needed to be. Mike's drill was smoking, apparently.

Project Basement

A brief outline of project basement:

Our goal: finish the basement of our 1917 home. At the conclusion of the project, we'll have a new stairway (less steep with two new stairs added), a carpeted family room, a 10x10 carpeted bedroom, a tiled bathroom with toilet, vanity, and shower, a tiled laundry room, and a semi-finished workroom. At the end of the day, we will have added somewhere around 1000 sq ft of liveable space.

Since we want to eventually add a full 2nd story to our house, we need a strong base. Over the course of the project, our contractor will remove and replace the north & south foundation. Mad Dog will add reinforced concrete foundation. Also, he'll be replacing the main support beam that runs east-west to support the main floor and finished attic. Finally, they'll be completely updating the electricity, adding linked fire alarms, and burying some of the plumbing under the concrete slab.

I'll be adding posts as fun (and not fun) stuff happens.

Demolition under way!

This is almost the same angle as before, just taken 5 hours later. The Sheetrock & foam and fiberglass insulation are gone from the music studio wall, and the insulation & Sheetrock are gone from the west wall. The carpet, too, has gone missing.

We learned that drainage into our sump pump actually spans the length of the west, north, and 1/3 of the east wall. This is a good thing from the standpoint of being dry. Mad Dog also mentioned that we might be able to get rid of the sump pump altogether, but Plumber Ron will be the final voice on the matter.

More to follow tomorrow, hopefully.

A [somewhat] blank canvas

Our basement at approximately 11am today. Left side of the photo is the south-side foundation, Washington State flag is the west wall, and the music studio wall is on the right. First step is demolition of all existing Sheetrock and downstairs framing. Many more posts to come over the months...