Tag: basement

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.

Doing Things the Wrong Way

October 20, 2014 / Matt / 0 Comments

We’re doing our project backwards and wrong. We’ve known this from the outset, but plowed ahead anyway. Basically, the right way to gut-remodel a house is to demo everything, rip up the basement floor and put in the new below grade plumbing, get that inspected, pour the floor, do the framing, install rough plumbing and electrical, get both of those inspected, then go on to insulation and drywall, and finish work. This is not how we’re doing things.

For starters, we’re living in the house on the second floor while we remodel. Because the house is a two flat we have a fairly comfortable apartment, if a bit cozy. We have a kitchen, a full bathroom, and heat. Second, we’re trying to remodel the first floor before we redo the basement. That means all the plumbing below the basement floor hasn’t been done yet, but we want to install all the above ground rough plumbing not just for the first floor, but to service the current and future second floor as well. At the same time, we’re trying to go by the book with permits and inspections.

This morning I met with a plumber, and he wasn’t excited about our plan. He suggested we dig up the basement floor, do all the below grade plumbing (new cast iron sewer to replace the existing clay pipe, new copper service line to replace the existing lead one), then to pour the floor we have to also do the interior weeping system, the under-slab insulation and the in-slab radiant tubing. Once all that’s done, then he could do the rough in for the first and second floor. You know: the right way. There’s a few problems with doing things the right way. For one thing, our basement is full of stuff. Sure we’ll have to move it eventually, but we’re hoping that would be after we had the floors above done, so we’d have places to put it. Next, the most practical way to dig down the basement involves us tearing down our existing garage so we can get a dumpster and cement truck into the back yard. We’re planning to replace the garage anyway, but doing that now is also less than ideal. Beyond that, it may even prompt the removal of the back porch, depending on how we do it. During this process we’d most likely have to move out of the house for weeks.

The biggest reason against doing the basement first is the money: redoing the basement floor is a very expensive project, and if we do it now it will mean other projects like the first floor will have to wait. When the basement is done, we’ll have an unfinished basement. It’s not a bad thing to have, but for the money we’d rather have a new living room, new kitchen, and new family room. We need to finish the basement eventually, but doing it now just for the sake of doing things the “right way” isn’t an attractive prospect. Unfortunately, there’s a good possibility that if we don’t do it the right way we won’t pass inspection, since none of the basement work would be done when we want to close up the walls in the first floor.

We’re going to talk to some other plumbers, contemplate some other options and possible compromises, and figure this out. One possibility may be doing the underground plumbing now but not the rest of the basement floor, though even that is a pricey way to go. There may be others we haven’t considered. Hopefully we’ll come to a solution in time to get spray foam in before winter, but if not, it won’t be the first time we’ve missed that goal.

Steam Pipe Removal

January 27, 2014 / Matt / 2 Comments

I’m sorry folks. This post could have been full of exciting, spark-showering photos of angle grinding, but we didn’t take in-progress shots. In fact, I only took phone camera pictures, so on top of not being as interesting they’re also grainy and blurry. I’ll try to do better.

Steam pipes

Anyway, here’s the old boiler and steam pipes in the foreground with the new boiler and new panel in the background. I finished taking down the steam pipes this weekend. I mostly used the angle grinder with a cutting disk, though in a few places I used the reciprocating saw with a metal blade and some cutting oil.

Water fountain

I was surprised to find that one section of the return pipes was still full of water, even though it hadn’t been running since last winter. I thought it would have evaporated by now, but I guess not. It eventually drained and I finished cutting it out.

Section removed

Because some of the supports were literally falling out of the ceiling, I strung it up in places with wire and bungie cords while I was removing it. All of the pipe went into my scrap pile, which at this point takes up a decent chunk of the basement. Once the snow melts I’ll haul it over to the recycling yard.

Scrap pile

Once everything was taken down it really opened up the basement. I also removed a leftover section of the old gas pipe while I was at it, just so I could call it 100% done. With the pipes removed and the chimney down, there’s nothing in the way of finishing the new subfloor, except for all of the stuff on the first floor I have to move out of the way. I’ve got most of the back section done, and I’m hoping the rest of it will go more quickly.

Pipes removed

The old boiler will wind up going to scrap too. It’s not as heavy as I expected. It’s pretty amazing how much different this section of the basement is from when we bought the place. I suppose that’s true of the first floor, too, since it’s all gutted, but somehow this feels more substantive.

Mechanical Room Preparation

July 10, 2013 / Matt / 0 Comments

With the hot water heater question sorted, I need to get the area of the basement that the water heater and boiler are going into ready. Eventually this will be the mechanical room… when we frame out the basement, after we lower the basement floor, after we finish the rest of the house. We already ran gas line, but there are still a few things to be done.

Mechanical room wall

The boiler will be hung on the wall, and since the basement isn’t framed out that means it’s going on an outside wall. We don’t want to mount it directly on the brick because we want our house insulated and air sealed. That means we need to frame the outside wall where the boiler and panel will go. However, because we’re going to eventually lower the basement floor, we can’t just put a sill plate of the wall on the floor, we need to attach the studs to the brick wall. To ensure air and moisture management, we’ll use sill gasket behind the studs and fill the holes with caulk. The area between the studs we’ll fill with closed-cell spray foam.

Before any of that can happen, I need to prepare the wall. As is typical of our house, years ago someone saw a problem and went out about fixing it the wrong way. In this case, moisture problems with the brick foundation wall were not corrected by fixing gutters, redirecting storm water, or repointing the brick, they were “fixed” by slathering (parging) mortar or cement all over the brick wall on both sides in an effort to water seal it. This is generally a terrible idea because it traps water in the brick, rotting it from within. The ineffectiveness of this strategy is revealed by the coat of paint they put over the finished product which is now bubbled up and crumbling off.

So I’ve been removing the parging with my rotary hammer in chisel mode and a pry bar. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but the wall does need to be plumb. While the brick itself is pretty straight, the parging is thick enough in places to make for a wonky wall. Removing it is tricky because the parging doesn’t want to come off and it’s easy to damage the brick itself.

I also need to run electrical from the panel to the mechanical room. Chicago code requires EMT conduit, and in this case it’ll be ¾” because I need to run several circuits (lighting, hot water heater, boiler and pump, smoke detector, and eventually the air handler and HRV). I’m hoping to get both the wall prep and the electrical done by this Monday. With that out of the way we can get the hot water heater installed and focus on the remaining tasks for the boiler prep.

Beam Project: Steel

February 24, 2013 / Matt / 6 Comments

Friday, Mike went to Suburban Welding and Steel and picked up the three pre-cut beam sections totaling about 45′ and one 20′-long piece of square tube steel to cut into columns. He has a big pickup with a rack on the back, so they were able to lower the steel onto the back with a crane. Total cost came to $1,083. Saturday morning I picked up some donuts and made some coffee and people started showing up. After a little bit of work getting the front basement window opened all the way and and the gate to swing wider, Mike got his truck angled up to the curb and we unloaded the first 384 lb, 16′ beam section. Predictable this was actually the last section we needed to put in, but the way they were loaded on the truck didn’t give us much choice. We fed it through the window and set it on a couple of ladders in the basement.

Old beam removed

Next we started taking out sections of the old beam. We got a bit of a surprise when a couple of 2x4s in the ceiling for drywall nailing edges were pulled down with the beam. This was especially alarming because they nearly pulled down the gas pipe that ran under them! Fortunately the pipe didn’t rupture and we were able to remove the 2x4s and re-anchor the pipe to the ceiling. The rest of the beam came down without incident and the temporary wall showed no signs of any problem carrying the load.

Cutting the beam

There was a slight miscommunication about one of the beam measurements so Mike cut a couple of feet off, but better too long than too short. He has a fancy gas-powered saw for just such a purpose. Having someone that not only knows how to do the job, but has the tools necessary to do it was critical to us being able to tackle this ourselves. With the beams cut down we used the jack posts to hold them in place. Then Mike ran a string line from one end to the other to that we could line them up properly and get everything level with the hydraulic jacks.

Positioning the beam

We used clamps to hold the two beam sections together because it was slightly torqued. Then Mike used his arc welder to weld the beam sections together. Normally the separate sections are just bolted together with a steel plate, but this will be stronger and hold everything together better. Next up was the columns. Dean took a turn with the big saw and cut the columns.

Cutting the column

The columns were a tiny bit too long, so I used the angle grinder to trim them down about an eighth inch. When we went to fit them again they were still too long, but it turned out one of my hydraulic jacks wasn’t quite holding pressure and the beam had just dropped slightly. We pumped it back into place and fitted the column in. Mike welded the columns into place, directly to the beam at the top and to a steel plate notched for the bolts at the bottom.

Mike welding steel beam

Angle grinding

Welded beam

Column base

Dean and I tried our hand at arc welding on the base of one of the columns, which was a really interesting experience. There’s a strange balance between keeping the end of the stick from touching the weld so that a spark gap is created while still continuously pushing the stick in so that it is consumed. We used the rotary hammer to drill holes into the footing for the bolts and pounded them in, tightening them up so they were good and snug. It was done.

Finished beam

Today I took down the temporary wall and got my first look at the basement completely opened up. I’ll still need to paint the beam so it doesn’t rust and Mike thinks I should put a column at either end since the ends of the beam are pocketed into the brick, which isn’t in terrific shape. At some point I’ll bring in a tuck pointer to clean up the brick foundation inside and out and we’ll see if that does it. Otherwise we’ll have a bit more steel work in our future. You can also see from the picture that I have a lot of cleaning to do!

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