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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We passed!

Woohoo! We passed the framing inspection!

As a matter of fact, he even complimented us, saying that it was something of a pleasure to do an inspection on some good, solid work - for a change.(He also complimented us on keeping such a clean and tidy work area, so we have that, too.)

He even had some helpful suggestions for the ducting and bathroom fan configuration. All in all, it was a quick, constructive little visit.

We are highly relieved.


It's a trick. There's no more post to read. Ha ha!
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Welcome to the bulkhead bonanza

It's been all about the bulkheads around here for the past few days. Well, and probably a few days before that, too.

Okay, so I've been working on bulkheads for, like, a week. Fine, I admit it.

But it's done! The framing, except for one stud that I haven't put it because I'm still squeezing through that particular gap to get to the workbench, is finished! Woo!

Which means, of course, that I have to book an appointment with the inspector now. Gulp. While I wrestle with that particular nicety, to which I am most assuredly not looking forward, let us peruse the accomplishments of the past few days.

First up, the final bit of non-bulkhead-related framing: the doorway into the workshop:



That was a little more complicated than the other doorways I've framed in, largely because we're re-using an old door, and not one that comes pre-hung inside a jamb. In other words, there was lots of math involved, and I haven't found out which part of it I did wrong yet. Probably all of it.

Oh, and speaking of my last post, one of the pictures I posted was not the right one. I've since uploaded the correct picture of the detailed framing in the closet. Also, here's our nice new duct, running right off the main trunk of the furnace:



On to the framing!

The first bulkhead I finished (besides the one that will be hidden inside the closet) was the one by the electrical panel. Fortunately, I had only put up the first couple of pieces when the electrician showed up to give us his quote, and he had a few very handy tips. The final result is a little higher, and a little shallower, but I'm a lot less worried about whether all those wires will fit:



As you can see, the whole closet wall is now framed in and ready for the next step:



The next bulkhead I worked on was the long one that runs the length of the support beam. This wasn't very exciting, really; just a lot of short pieces of two-by-two and lots of cursing and swearing - it's damn hard to hold those little pieces in place driving screws through and into the joists:



Not that we needed another reason to take that old crappy duct line out, but the bulkhead works much better without it:




And finally, my favorite bulkhead of all, the little one that covers the vent stack where it emerges from the bathroom wall and immediately turns up into the floor joists. Here's the installation site all prepped and ready:



Here's the bulkhead on top of the jig I used to put it together:



And finally, here it is in place, with a few extra pieces to help fasten the drywall around it:



Phew. That was a lot of pictures. Me go drink beer.

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Framing update

I know I've been saying this for a while now, but I think I might be telling the truth this time...

I should finish the framing this weekend.

Yep. All of it. Bulkheads, doorways, strange little closets - the whole shebang.

What's more, we have our electrician coming by this morning to scope out the project and work up an estimate for us. I'm hoping he won't look at the framing I've already done and tell us it's all wrong. (Still, better it coming from him than the inspector...) Speaking of which, I've been pretty busy this week and, once more, I have the pictures to prove it. Some of them were even taken with my new camera!

Looking back over the past few posts, I must admit that I've been somewhat remiss in keeping you all up-to-date on the framing progress. The last time I posted pictures of the framing, I hadn't even started to frame in the closet, save for its back wall. As you can see from the following series, I've come quite a ways since then.

First up, here's an establishing shot of the whole closet area:



The areas of interest are really the whole left side where the closet is going to go, and the duct on the top right, where we'll be building a bulkhead to hold all those wires. Jutting out from the wall is the outline of where the right-hand wall of the closet will be. Here's another look at that:



Heh, up close it kinda looks like an optical illusion or an Escher print. Or maybe I'm looking too hard. The reason it's so wide is that we want to run a duct line down from the top so we can put in a register at the bottom of the pillar.

Anyway, here's what I did on Thursday while the War Department was at the ballet:



I think even Amy had to admit that was a good night's work! Here's another shot of the inside of the closet so you can admire the tricky bits of the framing (all of it, really):



I also found time to wrap the duct in some insulating wrap so we could run the wires through the same space without any fear of them melting or overheating:



I taped up the joints with foil tape last night (wasn't THAT a fun little task - not!), and did some more bracing and some of the little finicky stuff that needs to be done before I can start on the bulkhead in front of the duct. None of that makes very good pictures, though.

And of course, speaking of pictures, here's one of the supervisor kitty in his natural habitat:



(Every five minutes for the past three days, Amy's been telling me to stop taking so many pictures of the cats. But she won't let me take any pictures of her, so this is what I'm reduced to. Besides, look at that picture! My old camera could never have taken that shot, not in a million years.

Fine, I'll stop with the pictures of my cat. Sheesh.)

Anyway, I have to go wake Amy up so that she's not showing the electrician around in her pajamas. Good times.

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Yet more framing... with ducts!

I actually started this post, like, two days ago, but then I did some more framing, and now everything I was thinking of writing on Tuesday is wildly inaccurate, and I have to start again. Yeah, I probably could have posted earlier in the week, but the post would have been something like:

"Ugh.
(picture)
Bleargh?
(picture)
Nice jaeorb?
(pictures)..."

Aren’t you glad I waited?

By the way, if you’re a fan of the crappy-ass pictures I take with my crappy-ass camera, well, I have Good News and Bad News: the Good News is that this post contains a buttload of the aforementioned crappy-ass pictures; the Bad News is that this might be the last post I’ll be able to complain about my crappy-ass camera. Because, really, if I can’t complain about my crappy-ass camera, I think we all lose a little something, if you know what I mean.

And if you don’t, well, never mind. Just click the link thingy and we’ll get started.

I’ve been in something of a hurry to finish the framing so we can get the electricians in and get an estimate from the guy who was supposed to be doing the ductwork (more on him in a minute). After three consecutive nights of framing, framing, and more framing, I’m happy to report that I’m almost done.

Before we get into the pictures of the new stuff, however, I thought I’d take a quick trip down memory lane and revisit what the place used to look like, back in the rose-coloured days of May:



Ah… so spacious, so “open-plan”. And we just couldn’t wait to wall it all off.

Here’s a shot from roughly the same spot (okay, fine, it's about four feet to the right and from a different angle) now:



It’s a veritable forest! It might be just a bunch of crappy spruce (honestly, I can’t believe how bad this latest batch of two-by-fours is – they’re all warped or full of knots or even cracked right down the middle), but they’re vertical and sturdy enough. Besides, they’ll all be covered up by drywall eventually anyway, so … well … so it’s kind of a wasted effort making them look nice, isn’t it? (And yes, there are a couple of braces missing from that wall - it was 20 past 10 when the battery in the drill ran out and I realized I'd forgotten to plug in the charger, so I called it a night. Heh, one of those braces only has one screw in it, actually, and it's not even driven in all the way yet...)

Let’s do some more!

Here are a couple of shots from the Dread Wall of Pink:





You’ll notice that I’ve even finished the bracing for that wall, and down into the corner. This is so that we aren’t wasting time when the electricians want to install electrical outlets in that wall.

Furthermore, I’ve started constructing the bulkhead along the support beam where the majority of the electrical wires will go:



(That block underneath is just for support while I get everything cut and screwed into place. I’ll take it off before the drywall goes on.) You can see how the bulkhead extends on the other side of the office and into the laundry room:



And of course, all this cutting and trimming and banging around has changed the scope and shape of my carefully sorted piles of wood, too. I now have only two piles; useful bits:



And firewood:



On to the ducts!

So, as I mentioned, we had a guy lined up (informally) to come in and rework the furnace ducts to supply heat to the office, and take out some of the more questionable bits like, say, this one:





That line comes off the main trunk of the furnace, comes down on the other side of the support beam, goes up again into the joists, and then splits off. One branch goes toward the register in the kitchen (which works), and the other goes into two dead ends. It also has arguably the worst taping job I’ve ever seen.

At any rate, none of the work we need done is all that complicated, as all we want to do is extend the cold air return to vent the office, lengthen two runs so that they supply heat to the office, and redo that appalling line to the kitchen so that it a) doesn’t have more kinks than a leather fetishist in Vegas, and b) supplies heat to the laundry room and kitchen instead of the kitchen and a pair of dead ends. The problem is that we’re not totally sure that what we want to do is to Code, or how big the cold air return has to be, or whether what we want to do is even advisable. (I’d be happy to just go ahead and do it, and bully for the inspector if he even notices, but the War Department is concerned about “efficiency” and “circulation” and “carbon monoxide poisoning”. Pft.)

Not that any of our concerns seem to matter, because we can’t get anyone to even come out and give us an estimate! The guy we were going to hire can’t even show up to look at the job until December, and the guy he recommended to us hasn’t called back. The people who installed our furnace won’t speak to us until at least JANUARY, and the people I called at random in the phone book haven’t bothered to call back to set up an appointment – they apparently don’t need the work anymore than anyone else.

So, ironically enough, the person we might have to consult is: the inspector. I think we’ll be writing up an email and including some of the pictures to explain the situation, and ask him if what we plan to do is acceptable. Of course, as Amy has already pointed out, the inspector won’t care very much if we’re getting enough to heat to certain areas (they’re not all that concerned with your comfort, just your adherence to the Code), but he will be able to tell us if our plan isn’t likely to pass his inspection.

Anyway, this post is long enough, I think, and I’m sure I’ve posted enough crappy-ass pictures for one day. If all goes well, the next picture I post will be the last one I’m forced to take with my crappy-ass camera. The subject matter of said picture?

The new camera, of course.
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It's almost a real room!

With my back feeling better (or close enough), it was time to return to what is fast becoming the theme of October: framing! I'm already thinking that my costume for Hallowe'en will most likely consist of a couple of two-by-fours lashed to my arms and a Chippendale calender hanging from a tack in my forehead. If anyone asks, I'm a studded wall. Har har.

Anyway, tonight was actually somewhat productive, and I have the pictures to prove it!

When last we visited the corner of the basement by the electrical panel, I had just finished laying down the footers for the wall that will eventually form the back of the closet, and separate the workshop from the office. Tonight I started to install the studs for that wall; here's my progress so far, from a couple of angles:





It's kind of tricky to build that wall, largely because there's nothing there to attach the top plate to. That large clump of wires will be running through a bulkhead at the top of the wall, and the angle of the ductwork there (that's the main trunk line for the furnace) means I have to leave some room at the top - not that there are any floor joists in the vicinity anyway. Most of the structural strength for that wall is going to come from the studs that form the side wall and front of the closet - which I haven't quite got to yet. We still need to figure out where the bulkhead for the vent stack (visible on the side of the bathroom wall in the second shot above) is going to go, and where we have to install the cold air return - which might have to go into the bulkhead anyway.

I'm not planning on doing the bracing in that wall any time soon, either - it's the shortest distance between the saw and the work bench, and I'm really not looking forward to having to go the long way around every time I put something down and can't find it again.

Oh, but I did manage to get rid of some old wires that were just hanging there in the way:



That little chore wasn't without its cost however...

The Injury Report

(This is quickly becoming a far TOO regular feature on this blog...)

• When I was removing that green wire, the very end of it caught on a nail in the wood, and when I gave it a good tug, popped free and stabbed me right in the lower lip. It didn't draw blood, and I don't think it left a mark, but lemme tell ya - that hurt. A lot.


• The wood of our joists and support beams is very old and very, very dense. In the course of trying to remove a particularly obstinate staple, a very brave screwdriver gave its life for the cause:
  
  
  
  The worst part? That was the War Department's screwdriver and now I have to buy a new one. Sigh.

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Me and my aching back

So, something of a mixed bag of results this weekend. On one hand, the framing continues, and the outside is coming together nicely, but on the other, well, that's why I have a feature called the Injury Report, isn't it?

First up, the War Department managed to find a project that not only makes for a good picture (well, the best picture my crappy-ass camera can manage), but makes for a better picture than MY project! I hope this doesn't start a trend. After all, if I'm going to be writing all the posts, I want all the glory. (True story: when I sat down to post this, I asked Amy, "How come I have to write all the posts?" Her response, "Because you like that shit." So there you have it.)

While I toiled in the basement putting up studs and using the hammer drill and hurting myself, Amy decided to take advantage of some mild, sunny October weather to put the fence back together. She had saved most of the uprights when we took the fence down, so it was just a matter of cutting a couple of two-by-fours to the right length (which I, having ready access to the chop saw, did for her), and reattaching the boards.



Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Of course, what you can't tell from that angle is that the replaced section is all nice and straight, and the other half of the fence is all crazy tilted and askew, making for a rather odd view when looked at from the side. But that's a job for another day...

As mentioned, I was down in the basement doing some building of my own. The first few studs - the last ones on the Dread Wall of Pink - went up pretty quickly, with only a little fiddling around the electrical panel:



After some consulting and brainstorming with the War Department, I laid down the footers that will form the back wall of the closet:



Amazingly enough, the tapcons went in for all seven of those holes as smooth as you please. The only problem was when I went to stand up afterward...

The Injury Report

• The muscles in my lower back have siezed up right proper like. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch when I try and lift anything (like a cat or a piece of two-by-four), and has improved only slightly since yesterday afternoon when it first happened. As you can well imagine, this has somewhat limited my usefulness today. Okay, it's completely limited my usefulness today.

That's it for me. I'm going to go lie down again. Gingerly.
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The framing continues...

Well, despite having to tend to a flu-stricken War Department, I did manage to get some more framing done last night. It's not that impressive (though it was a little tricky in some places):



(And yes, the supervisor kitty says it passed his rigorous inspection.)

Almost done that wall, actually. I wanted to put a couple more studs in before I called it a night, but the sawing and hammering (directly underneath our bedroom) was giving Amy a migraine. Oh, and while we're on the subject of making a lot of noise, can I just say that I'm really starting to hate tapcons? Out of the three tapcons I had to put in last night, I broke two off inside the concrete, had to drill two extra holes, and destroyed yet another drill bit, necessitating yet another a trip to Home Despot five minutes before closing. Stupid things - I'm really not looking forward to putting down the subfloor with them.

But it wouldn't be right to post just one picture and leave all my loyal fans (ha!) hanging, so I figured now might be a good time to take you on a little photo tour of the workspace.

First up, a couple of pictures showing what happens when you buy two-by-fours in eight foot lengths for a basement with a seven foot ceiling. I try to keep the remnants into two piles. The first pile contains any pieces long enough to still be of use for braces:



The second pile I just call kindling:



So, remember when you were a teenager, and your room was really messy, and you told your mom not to clean it because you still knew where everything was and you didn't want her messing up your system?

Yeah? Wasn't that, like, the biggest frikking lie ever?



That's the workbench. Yes, it always looks like that. No, I don't really know where everything is. I just stick my hands into the pile and hope I find whatever it is I'm looking for before the pointy bits start to really hurt.

Next up is the sole source of entertainment available in the basement, the World's Crappiest Radio:



Don't let the labels or CD-shaped door in the top fool you. Only the radio works, and even that sucks. Well, to be fair, a lot of the suckage is the fault of the crappy radio stations in Victoria, but even if they were better, the radio itself would still be a piece of shit.

And finally, here we have the floor drain in the laundry room:



You may be wondering why the cover for the floor drain is sitting on the floor beside the drain rather than, as its intended purpose and indeed its very name would suggest, covering the floor drain, Well, because we have cats.

The supervisor kitty has decided that the most important thing in the world is whatever is in that drain. Not that there's anything in the drain beside the little valve thingy, but he's convinced that it's mightly important that he be able to inspect that drain at all times.

For example, when I finished up last night, I put the drain cover back in place, and put a laundry basket over the drain. On my way up the stairs, I passed the cat coming down. I hadn't even taken my shoes off before he had the basket out of the way, and was working on the drain. I heard the clatter of the metal cover on the concrete floor before I made it halfway down the stairs again.

Brain the size of a walnut. Remarkable.

Anyway, with a little luck, I might finish the framing this weekend! Wouldn't that be sweet?
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Insert Thanksgiving- & framing-related pun here

I tried to think of a good title, I really did. Somehow, "Happy Framesgiving" and "Frappy Thamesgiving" and "Thanksframing Gifts" and even "Sir Frames-a-lot" just didn't seem to give it the special oomph I know everyone expects from me, so I'll leave it up to you to make your own joke. (Give me a break - I'm tired. And full of turkey. Actually, I'm tired BECAUSE I'm full of turkey. And because I did a lot of framing today. You didn't think I was just trying to combine Thanksgiving and Framing because I felt like a challenge did you?)

That's right, after more than a week of enforced idleness thanks to the Top Brass' visit (not that I couldn't use the break), it was back into the trenches and full speed ahead this morning. While the War Department puttered around outside "winterizing" the barbecue, summer furniture, and assorted lawn care equipment, I belted on my tool belt and set to framing. (Once again, I got the job that makes for better pictures.)

The first thing I did was finish putting up the studs on the other side of the doorway opening that I started a little more than a week ago. You can now kinda see where the door between my office and the laundry room will be:



(Ignore the supervisor kitty - he's not really inspecting anything, he's just hoping I forgot to close the basement window.)

Once that was done, I could start on the hard part - framing around the support post. It's a little hard to explain, so I'll just show a few pictures of the finished product, and try to describe what it is you're looking at here.



That's a picture of the wall just inside the doorway. The big, window-like opening on this side of the wall will be a built-in bookcase - eventually. The studs behind that opening are actually part of the bathroom wall, coming down on the other side of the support beam.

Here's another picture of the same thing, looking back towards the office door:



And the same corner from the other side, with the bathroom door (or the opening where the door will be eventually) visible on the right:



And finally, just because it was a damn tricky bit of framing, and I'm kind of proud of the job I did, here's a close up of the corner detail:



Oh, and if the more observant among you are wondering why the top plate on the office side of the new wall didn't go all the way to the floor joists, it's because we're putting a bulkhead on that side in which to run all the wires:



(God damn it, my camera sucks.)

Of course, the REALLY observant among you are wondering how I managed to do all this work and still cook a turkey. Well, I made the big turkey dinner yesterday, which is why there was no update for your Monday morning. As for my impending turkey-induced lack of consciousness? Two words, my friends: LEFT OVERS.

Oh, and before I go sleep off this turkey coma, it's time for another edition of everyone's favorite feature...

The Injury Report

• I have two small scrapes on the back of my right thumb. Normally, this wouldn't be noteworthy, but... oh, nevermind. I was going to say that they really hurt when I put on the rubber gloves to clean out the cat box, but ... meh. It's not that bad. I just didn't want to be left out.


• Amy has an ingrown toenail, and she had all these freaky red blotches on her foot. She cleaned it out with hydrogen peroxide and put some Polysporin on it, though, and it doesn't look nearly as cool any more.

That's it for me. I'm off to bed, where I intend to groan myself to sleep on my huge, turkey-filled belly.

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All sick and no work make Don something something

Well, after spending an entire weekend on the couch recovering from surgery two weeks ago, and knowing that the War Department's top brass (her parents) were coming into town this weekend, I was all fired up to get some work done this week.

Sadly, I went right back on the DL on Thursday with a nasty little head cold that kept me sidelined for the last four games... er, days. Sorry - it's the last week of baseball, and the playoff races in the NL seem to be some kind of grotesque "after you," "no, I insist, after YOU" routine. I've been watching a lot of baseball, so bear with me.

I did manage to continue one thing, and got a nice little package in the mail, too...

First up, I managed to get the footer and top plates in position for the wall that's going to hold the door between the laundry room and the office, and put up a few studs in in as well. You can see how there's a bit of a jog in the wall to go around the bottom of the toilet drain from upstairs:




This way, we keep the plumbing bulkheads all on one side of the wall - means less drywalling and mudding, which is always a good thing. Unfortunately, it was right about there that I got sick, so I haven't managed to frame in the other side of the doorway.

Oh, but I did get one cool little present: my Sakrete hat arrived!



Thanks to Shawn King at Sakrete for the sweet new lid. It's far too nice a hat to work in, however - I'm saving it for the trips to the hardware store where all the contractors and store personel can get all jealous over it.

Sorry to everyone else for the paucity of the updates. I'm going to go lie down for a while.
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