Category: Basement Remodel

Dig down the floor, redo the below-grade plumbing, Pour a new floor, and make the basement livable so we can demo the second floor.

Basement Floor Removal – Part 2

March 4, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

Rob clearing out debris

We kept up work on the basement floor, but the more I used the concrete saw, the more I used the sledgehammer and rotary hammer. The saw was simply too slow and produced too much dust, even using water. I worked out a technique with the sledge where I could get a single crack running the length of the concrete, maybe a foot from the edge, then use the rotary hammer to split off chunks. It wasn’t perfect, but it made shorter work of the floor than the saw.

Quality floor

The concerns I had with using the sledge, namely the ceramic tiles and the clay sewer line, were misplaced. With some safety goggles and a few thwacks, the sledge makes quick work of the tile. The sewer line is buried deep enough that I’m not worried about cracking it, especially since a fair portion of the floor wound up being suspended a few inches over the dirt, leaving cavities beneath it (including an old rat nest and a whole section of bricks).

Collin breaking up the floor

We got the dumpster delivered last Thursday morning, and Sunday Sarah’s parents, sister and brother-in-law, as well as her nephew Collin and two of his friends came out to help load all of the concrete into the dumpster. It was a long day and at one point we started getting concerned it wasn’t all going to fit in the dumpster, but ultimately we got everything we had broken up loaded. There’s just a section at the front left to finish that we’ve been working on this week and hope to wrap up this weekend.

Back of basement (also bricks from under the concrete floor)

We left a small section of floor at the back of the basement that has the washer, dryer, chest freezer, and hot water heater for the time being. We’ll have to remove that later, when we temporarily move out and the sewer and water main are replaced. In the mean time we’ll start excavating the plumbing and get some quotes on that work, and I can finish the masonry and lintels around the front bay windows and start installing the new windows.

A big thanks to Mike, Lee, Nicole, Rob, Collin, Dylan, and Dustin for all their help!

Basement Floor Removal – Part 1

February 24, 2015 / Matt / 1 Comment

LED lights

We’ve been hard at work in the basement. Since getting the new electrical installed and putting in the LED bulbs, we’ve pulled up all of the linoleum tile to make way for concrete floor removal. I bought an electric concrete saw from Amazon, but it uses a 20-amp plug. As it happens, we now have two 20-amp outlets, thanks to the new electrical, but we don’t have a 20-amp extension cord. Home Depot didn’t even carry one, aside from a 9-foot “appliance cord” that wasn’t going to reach very far in the basement. I ordered the extension cord from Amazon as well, but I didn’t want to sit idle over the weekend. That meant it was time to break out the sledge hammer and do things the old fashioned way.

Using a combination of sledge, pry bar, and my rotary hammer in chisel mode, Sarah and I managed to break up all the concrete on the North side of the basement. We spent a fair number of hours on it Saturday, Sunday, and last night. The other half of the basement (technically sixty percent) we’ll use the saw, since it’s covered in ceramic tile and we don’t want to crack the sewer pipes running somewhere underneath it by swinging the sledgehammer too much. My hands are pretty sore from the sledging we did so far, so switching to the saw sounds like a big improvement. The problem with the saw is dust. For that I’m hoping the shop vac attachment will make a difference, since we can’t use water with the electric saw.

Sarah ordered a dumpster for Thursday, and we’ll have it for two weeks. We need to have the whole thing broken up and hauled out by then, aside from the back corner where the water heater and laundry are. Those can wait a little while longer.

Basement Plan

January 28, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

We’ve worked out our plan for moving into the basement. Part of that is figuring out how we’ll lay out the space, given that eventually it will be an entertaining space, not an apartment. To that end we’ve come up with a way to integrate some temporary bedrooms into the plan without having to change around the walls we want in the finished product.

Basement Apartment Plan

In the plan you can see some of the walls are white and some are green. The white walls represent the finished product. We’ll build these walls with the intention of leaving them there. The green walls will partition off some bedrooms and will be temporary (they won’t actually be green). We won’t anchor them to the floor and we’ll take them out as soon as we’re done living there. The top left is where we’ll have a kitchen and laundry space. We’ll put in a utility sink that will serve for the kitchen but we can leave it there for future use. The laundry is there now and it can stay there until we finish the second floor, since it can share the sink plumbing and vent out the back window. We’ll put a counter on top of the washer and dryer to use as a kitchen prep space.

The wall in the bottom right corner is to close off the gas meter, which is a little scary and we don’t want the kids to play around it, hang from it, break it, blow up the house, etc. Eventually, People’s Gas is supposed to move it to the outside, but for now it’s stuck where it is. We may try to come up with something simpler, but this also gives us some closet space, which is otherwise lacking. We’ll set up shelving where we can, but storage will definitely be at a premium.

To get to this point we need the electrical run, the windows replaced, the concrete floor dug up and the foot of dirt removed. Then we start putting stuff in: the interior weeping system, new plumbing (that’s when we have to move out), gravel, rigid foam, wire mesh, PEX tubing for radiant floor heat, and new concrete. With the floor in place we can build the permanent walls and finish the bathroom so we can move back in. Then we put in the sink, build the basement stairs and the temporary walls, and finally move into the basement!

There will be a lot of other projects along the way, some big and some small. Near term I need to install bracing between the first floor joists before the electrical is run, install new lintels over two of the front bay windows, and try to patch some leaks in the gutters to stop water from coming into the basement. We may take the concrete out through the front window to a dumpster on the street, but to remove all the dirt and bring in the new gravel and concrete we’ll tear down the back porch and the garage. We’re also changing the back basement steps including a new retaining wall, and after we lower the floor we need a new back door. Even with some chunks of this work being done by contractors, it’s safe to assume that this will take us most of the year.

Basement Tuckpointing

January 26, 2015 / Matt / 4 Comments

Before tuckpointing

The next step down the road to getting our basement livable is repointing the brick walls. 120 years of water damage, bad patching, paint, and neglect had left the brick in bad shape. Large portions of the walls had been parged with mortar or concrete, which can trap water in the brick rather than allowing it to dry. We started by chipping off the parging. Some of it was so loose and brittle we could snap chunks off with our bare hands, while other sections came off only reluctantly with a hammer and chisel. About the time I got my rotary hammer back from a friend, I decided we just needed to hire out the job to some professional tuck pointers.

After hammer and chisel

We got a couple of quotes, but wound up settling on Tuckpointing Masonry Systems, who Dean had used and recommended. They came in with a crew and after two days of dust and noise, the basement looked amazing. They ground out all of the mortar below grade and completely repointed it. Above grade they knocked out the loose material and spot-tuckpointed where it was needed.

After tuckpointing

The other thing we had them do was to rebuild the sills on the front bay windows. The bay windows are taller than the other windows in the basement, extending down to ground level, which makes them susceptible to water coming in. To prevent this, the tuck pointers installed new concrete sills with flashing. The next step is to re-frame the two angled windows in the bay, since they currently don’t have lintels.

Rebuilt bay windows

I’ve requested quotes on new windows and asked Percy, our electrician, to come over and give us a quote on new electrical in the basement, including lights, outlets, and switches. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but once all of that is done we start breaking up the floor!

Basement Clean-up

January 21, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

I haven’t posted since before the holidays, but we haven’t been idle in that time. Unfortunately our work just hasn’t been very interesting. Fortunately that’s finally about to change. Let me just cover what we’ve been up to, or rather down to since it’s all been in the basement.

Basement before

Over the last couple years, ever since we finished the basement apartment demo, things have been collecting in the basement. What started with the washer and dryer, some shelving with bins, and a neatly packed pallet of furniture gradually spread to take up half the basement, while the other half filled with reclaimed lumber and scrap metal. Now that we’re planning to redo the basement floor sooner rather than later, everything needs to be cleared out. We’ve been working on this project for a while now, and we’re finally done.

Basement during

Ever sine we started this project I’ve been collecting scrap metal in hopes of selling it, but the price of ferrous metal makes it barely worthwhile, so my friend Dean helped me sort out the copper and brass, which do have some value. A couple months ago, our friend Mike came by with his truck and took a big chunk of our scrap metal, using his torch to cut down the bigger pieces much faster than my tools would allow. I ripped out the old steel tub from the basement bathroom and left it in the alley with the old cast iron boiler inside (in pieces). Thanks to the scavengers it was gone within 12 hours. Aaron sorted through the BX electrical cable and we got the last few remnants cleared out. I never did find out what my 5 gallon bucket of screws and nails was worth, for all the trouble it was to fill it. At least it all got recycled, even if we didn’t make money on it.

With our three-year-old Derek’s “help” I took down the remainder of the old brick chimney. Sarah added the bricks to the pile in the back yard and I hauled out several bags of mortar. We moved all of our “stuff” up to the first floor, including the shelving. It may need to go into storage eventually, but it can stay there for the time being.

Basement after

I got the last bits of framing out, cut down and cleared out a bunch of the less useful lumber, and moved the rest up to the now quickly-filling first floor. I sold a stack of old floor boards on Craigslist, but so far that hasn’t worked for the elliptical that Sarah got from some friends and never used. We’ve got tuck pointers coming in to clean the inside of the brick walls, so we moved the elliptical, the freezer, and the washer and dryer to the center and covered them all in plastic. This was a lot of work. Sorry we haven’t been good about providing updates, but this is pretty much what we’ve done. Moving forward things should be more frequent.

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