Year: 2015

Basement Dig Out – Part 2

May 12, 2015 / Matt / 5 Comments

Ramp to basement

I’ve got this great new workout you should try; it’s called “pushing wheelbarrows full of clay up a steep ramp”. In the last two weeks we’ve filled two 10-yard heavy debris dumpsters, emphasis on the heavy. Tomorrow they swap the full dumpster for an empty one and it starts again, so this is basically our day off. We’re getting one per week and I expect that to continue for the next couple weeks.

Second dumpster filled

Our original wheel barrow was old when we got it and was not up to the rigors of this project. The bucket tore loose from the frame and we set it aside. Sarah’s dad lent us his wheelbarrow, but it’s looking a little crooked these days. Sarah bought two new wheelbarrows, and between the three we’ve been putting them to use. I hauled 30 loads in two hours Saturday evening. I’d guess each dumpster is about 150 loads, since we can only fill the wheelbarrows about half-full and still push them up the basement ramp. The ramps are working well, though the one up from the basement is the tough one, especially when it gets slick from the rain and mud. The ramp I built to get up to the top of the dumpsters is great, though. That was time well spent.

Digger and wheelbarrows

The digger (mini excavator) has proven its worth too. Every time we grab a shovel to manually dig around the footings we’re given a taste of what the task would have been like without it, and it’s just awful. Digging with the backhoe on the other hand is a breeze. Hauling up bucketfuls of heavy clay, the hardest part is dropping clods into the wheelbarrows without knocking them over (especially the crooked one) and not digging too deep. I used my laser level to confirm the footings are pretty consistent in height, so we just need to dig even with the bottom of them, about 14 inches total.

Excavation

Looking forward, we’ve gotten about a third of the dirt removed. With the dumpster we get tomorrow we can get most of the next third removed. That means it will be time to move the water heater and the laundry upstairs so we can pull up the last section of concrete floor. I’m taking off some time from work next week to get that done as well as level what we’ve dug so far. Our goal is to finish with the digger by the weekend after Memorial Day, which includes digging out the new back steps. May’s looking pretty busy!

Basement Dig Out – Part 1

May 4, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

Loading dumpster

It’s time to start digging out the basement! We got the first heavy debris dumpster in and last week I took out the concrete back steps leading out of the basement with a sledge and the rotary hammer so we can make a ramp. I used the concrete saw to cut out a section of patio at the top of the stairs to make the ramp more gradual, then put in a section of shingled plywood from the garage roof so we could start bringing wheel barrows up.

Patio cut

Removing steps

Finished ramp (also Derek)

We got the leftover concrete that didn’t fit in the previous dumpster loaded, along with the pile of bricks and dirt that I’d pulled up by hand. Just that was enough to fill the dumpster to the point that we had to close the door. Then we started using the ramp and platform I built to dump full wheelbarrows into the dumpster.

Mini excavator

Saturday I picked up the tool that will help make the dig out just a bit easier: a mini excavator. After a quick review of a Youtube video for a similar model, we got the excavator into the basement (I wound up having to take the door jam off) and started digging. The bottleneck is definitely the wheelbarrows. The excavator can fill a wheelbarrow in two buckets, so it took some practice before we worked out a solid system for working efficiently. About the time we’d worked it out, the first dumpster was full and we had to stop.

While we wait for the next dumpster I’ll start clearing out the footings along the wall and get our depth figured out. Up to this point we’ve been winging it, and we don’t want to go too deep! Using the excavator is fun, but I’m still sore from pushing all the wheel barrows of dirt up the ramp. We’re expecting to have three or four dumpsters all told, so this process will probably eat up the better part of a month.

Back Yard Cleanup and Ramp

April 24, 2015 / Matt / 3 Comments

Starting to fill

Following our back porch and garage demo, Sarah cleared a path in the back yard and last Friday the dumpster was delivered for all the debris. Unfortunately, even with careful loading and help from Dean we couldn’t fit everything in. Tuesday they swapped the full 30 yard dumpster for an empty 15 yard so we could get the rest of the debris cleared out.

Filled to the top and getting picked up

Before loading the second dumpster, I harvested some of the materials to build a ramp. Our previous experience with heavy debris dumpsters has made it clear that we need a better way to dump full wheelbarrows of concrete and dirt. For the first half of loading, the door of the dumpster is open and it’s pretty straightforward, but after the dumpster starts to fill and the door is closed, it’s not so simple. Previously we wound up using buckets or in the case of concrete, unloading by hand. But building a ramp makes the whole process much easier, and since we’re going to have at least three full dumpsters of heavy clay, it’s worth doing.

Ramp design

After a bit of brainstorming the simplest way to make a ramp that would stand up to load after load of heavy wheelbarrows, I settled on a design and drew it in Sketchup, using the measurements of all the pieces from my drawing to make a part list. I picked out 2x6s of the appropriate size from the garage pile and cut them per plan and then assembled the thing. It actually worked out really well and I got the whole thing done in a couple hours.

Completed Ramp (also Derek)

The second half of the ramp is a level platform to make it easier to turn the wheel barrow and dump it in. I didn’t bother with Sketchup because it was all right angles. I just cut a stack of boards and then screwed it together. The tops of the ramp and platform are sections of roof from the garage. The idea is that the shingles will make it easier to get traction with the wheel barrow, especially since it will probably get pretty muddy. We also kept a couple of roof sections for the dirt ramp we’ll have into the basement once I remove the back steps.

Ramp and platform

We got the second dumpster filled and even had enough room left for Dean and Siobhan to bring over a couple of carloads of junk that’s been accumulating in their garage. I didn’t get a picture of it full, but imagine a full dumpster and there you go.

First dirt dumpster

The new dirt dumpster was just dropped off and we’ve got some work ahead of us. You can see how the ramp will help with the loading once the door is closed. Things are about to get busy!

Garage Demo

April 6, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

The garage (doors removed)

Our whirlwind of demo continues with the destruction of our terrible, terrible garage. The garage is a tragic story, really. A perfectly good, new, professionally built garage was put up a few years before we bought the house. Apparently it wasn’t big enough, though, so the previous owners poured a two foot concrete pad extension on one side, cut one wall off, and moved it over. Then they just added boards to bridge the gap and shingled over it. The main door was replaced with a larger one and at the back (yard side) they put a smaller door, which may or may not have been the original front garage door. In any case, the structure was badly compromised, and by the time we bought it, water, rats, roaches, and plants were getting inside. We’ve used it as-is for the last few years, with big plans for a flat-roofed masonry garage and a yard-side fireplace waiting in the wings.

Roof removal

With our basement dig out pending and a giant pile of debris from the porch in the back yard, we needed to tear down the garage to make way for dumpsters. Sarah’s parents came down to lend a hand on Saturday. There was some doubt as to how long the process was going to take, but we had the whole thing down by mid afternoon.

Going…

Gone!

We wanted to get the yard closed off before calling it a day. We started work on the gate, but we only got one side up before it started getting late. By then dinner had arrived, so we propped up the other fence panels and called it a day. Sunday I broke down the garage pieces, we got the pad swept up, and I put together the rest of the fence and gate across the back.

Fence installation (also Derek)

The gate doesn’t work all that well at the moment. Because the new fence on the right doesn’t have very good footings and because I put in the posts with spikes instead of footings, the gate needs some center support to stay rigid. That in turn make it difficult to open and close. I may put a wheel on at least the left panel to make it easier to get the car in and out. When you open the right side gate, the fence leans enough that the neighbors side gate opens by itself. In any case, the garage is down and the first dumpster is on order for Friday, so now we need to get a path cleared in the yard!

Back Porch Demo

March 30, 2015 / Matt / 2 Comments

We want to dig out the basement, and the only door is at the back. To be able to get a dumpster into the back yard and haul loads of dirt straight out, we need to tear down the back porch and the garage. We’re planning to replace both anyway, so doing it now makes sense. The back porch is a fully enclosed, two-story, vinyl-siding-clad beast. We took out the stairs from the first floor to the second a while back so we could put in the back sliding door, so it just has steps down to the back door and to the basement.

The first step was to move all of our accumulated stuff off the porch, including the old radiators. Fortunately I found a used radiator company to come and take them and even pay me a bit for the trouble. I disconnected and removed all the old electrical and moved the phone line box from the outside of the porch to the outside of the house.

Windows and doors removed

Saturday morning I started work removing the doors and windows and was soon joined most of by Sarah’s family. We discovered that because the porch was enclosed after it was built, the walls weren’t integral to the structure. The walls consisted of some horizontal 2x4s attached to vertical beadboard, some of which was twenty feet long, and vinyl siding on top of that. While not very strong it held together remarkably well. The big challenge was the right side, where there was no landing or stairs to work from, just a big open space.

Walls coming down (with Mike and Matt L)

We managed to rip down the right side of the wall in one giant piece. You can see from this photo how the floor only extends to the door in the middle of the house. With that piece down, the rest of the back wall was pretty straightforward. The right side wall was a bit interesting. We wound up pulling the pieces of beadboard off individually and then the vinyl siding, which at that point was just hanging from itself.

Walls removed (with David and Matt L)

By that point is was evening and we wrapped up for the day. The next day we had a bunch of friends over to start working on the structure. The roof was an open question, since there wasn’t a great way to reach most of it. In hindsight, it may have been better to tear the porch down back when we took out the stairs, since having the landing would have made this process easier, plus we wouldn’t have had to worry about breaking the new sliding door with a piece of falling debris.

Roof removal

We used the ladders and a piece of fencing we bought to fill in the gap to shield the sliding door from the chunks of falling roof. We used a rope on the right column to pull it down after cutting it near the base with a chain saw. At first we tried the pictured system of pulleys to pull it down, but the angle was wrong so we wound up not using them. Unfortunately the porch beams were pocketed into the sheathing, so I have to go back and patch the holes in the outside wall before birds start nesting in the walls. I ordered an extension ladder as well, something that probably would have come in handy for this project, since the folding Werner ladders aren’t quite long enough.

Removing the last section of roof (with Dean, Matt B, and Drew)

We had a bit of a scare pulling down the last section of roof because the left column started to lean out, not only getting close to our power line, but pulling away from the beam that held up the second floor of the porch! After we got the roof section off things went quickly and we got the second floor structure removed. I also screwed the second floor door shut so we won’t have any accidents.

Finishing up (Dean and Matt B)

The first floor went pretty quickly too. We left the section by the stairs so we can still get in and out. We moved all of the drywall out of the garage and the freezer out of the basement and into the first floor, and then Dean and Matt built a new railing while I put up some house wrap over the sheathing and patched the lower two holes in the wall.

All done! (With Dean, Drew, and Hector)

We now have a massive pile of debris in the back yard (scroll back through the pictures to watch it grow). We’ll need to live with it until we get the garage torn down and a dumpster into the yard, but that should just be a few weeks. I plan to salvage some scrap material to build a ramp that we can use to get wheelbarrows of dirt into the dumpsters when we dig out the basement. This was a big two-day project and we couldn’t have done it without tons of help from family and friends.

A huge thanks go out to the Saturday crew: Mike, Lee, Matt L, Amy, Rob, Nicole, David, Collin, Dylan, and Dustin, as well as the Sunday crew: Dean, Hector, Drew, Anna, and Matt B. Thanks everyone!

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