Demolition: Is it worth it?

Welcome to the first in a series of “Is It Worth It?” posts on Don and Amy’s Basement Reno blog, where I take each of the tasks we tackled over the course of our renovation, and describe the trials and tribulations we encountered and conclude whether it’s worth doing yourself or if you should just hire someone to do it for you.

You know, if you were ever foolish, wealthy, AND bored enough to want to try something like this yourself.

And yes, I stole the idea from Canada’s Worst Handyman. Good show. But we're going to Seattle to catch one last baseball game this weekend and I won't have much else to post, so this is what you get.

First up: demolition!

Our experience

As I’m sure you remember, our demolition came about in multiple stages. The majority of it went fairly smoothly, and we didn’t actually destroy anything we didn’t mean to. The only injury incurred was a bruised eye socket thanks to a stubborn nail and a certain lapse in concentration when switching between dust mask and eye gogglers.

The advantage for us in doing the demo ourselves was the whole multiple stages thing. We actually needed to frame in parts of the office and bathroom before we could start moving other things to get to the rest of the bits we needed to demolish. If we had hired somebody to this, we would have had to ask them to come back several times, which probably would have cost more.

Pros:
Let’s face it, demolition is kind of a no-brainer: see wall, smash wall, done. Of all the tasks involved, demo certainly requires the least amount of brain power and - surprisingly – relatively little brute strength, once the concept of leverage comes into play. Not only that, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Cons:
The potential for injury and/or tetanus is fairly high, it’s generally very dirty, and once the fun of all the smashy-smashy is over, there’s quite a bit of clean-up involved.

Is It Worth It?
In a word: absolutely. Just remember to wear your eye gogglers, kids, and invest in a pair of decent gloves and a Magic Bar or two. Oh, and I highly recommend hiring someone to take the trash away for you as we did. Saves a lot of time and, believe it or not, money. We’ve gone with 1-800-GOT-JUNK on more than a couple of occasions, and they’ve been consistently great.

Next time: digging your own drainage ditches for fun and profit! Or not!

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Basement renovation tips

I will be the first to admit that I've made a few mistakes over the course of this basement reno. Actually, that's not true. The War Department would be the first to admit that I've made a few mistakes over the course of this basement reno and she would also be in something of a hurry to point out that, in truth, I've made more than a few.

That being said, I try hard to not make the same mistake more than... a couple of times, really, and to learn from those mistakes so as not to repeat them... more than a couple of times. At any rate, I thought that it might be worthy to share some basement renovation tips with my readership in the hope that I might educate, as well as entertain.

Oh, who am I kidding? Nobody reads this thing to learn anything, they just want to laugh at my pain.

This then, is the first edition of a new feature here on the OurBasementReno blog...

Don's Renovation Tips
(Also known as "Don't Do What Donny Don't Does".)

The tip for this inaugural edition has to do with one of my favorite jobs, framing, and a job that's quickly climbing the ladder towards least favorite, insulating.

See, the thing about insulating is that it's a lot more finicky than you'd think. You can't just stuff insulation willy-nilly into the voids, you have to cut it to fit within the space in addition to cutting it fit around any electrical boxes or other oddities. And of course you have to do this while wearing gloves, a dust mask, and usually a sweatshirt or other covering garment to keep the insulation from getting between your skin and clothes. Which means it's both itchy AND hot. This spells fun, kids!

So the best approach to insulation is to cut it as little as possible. Of course, the only way to make sure that you're not cutting it too much is to plan ahead while framing. Ideally, you want to make sure that as many of your voids are 16" on center as possible, and you want to position your cross-braces so that they leave just the right amount of room (on one side or the other) for a 46" long bat of insulation. Pretty simple, right?

Guess who didn't do either of those things?

This guy!



(I got the Carhartts for Christmas from Amy. I think she figures if I look more like Mike Holmes, I might ACT more like Mike Holmes. I figure it can't hurt... And yes, great suffering jesus, that's a terrible picture of me.)

Any way, the long and the short of it is that we spent a lot more time fiddling about with the insulation than we needed to simply because I was more concerned with my braces being at an aesthetically-pleasing level that at a height that made sense for installing insulation.

But we're done!





For now. We can't insulate some of the walls just yet because we won't be drywalling one side or the other for a while and there's something about not allowing exposed insulation in the building code. I dunno, something about fire hazards or something. Whatever.

Oh, and while we're talking about drywall, get a load of what's in the basement right now:



Joy! That's four sheets of moisture-resistant AquaBoard and 12 sheets of good old fashioned drywall! There is a light, I say, a light at the end of yon tunnel.

Tomorrow morning, I get to call the inspector and book our next inspection! Further joy!

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