This was the basement when we bought the house:
We found out that the house was surrounded by expansive soil in 2015 and had helical piers installed to try and keep the walls from falling in when the soil got saturated with water and expanded against the walls.
Everything was drywalled up after that, but we didn’t take any pictures because someone else did it and painted it all white.
We found out that the piers were working too good last year because the water pressure in the soil started pushing water through the concrete into the basement. We called in a bunch of companies who gave us three basic choices:
- Dig a big trench on the outside of the walls and waterproof the outside. Then install a French drain on the outside of the walls, which would make maintenance very difficult. This was $19,000.
- Dig a big trench on the outside of the walls and waterproof the outside. Then tear down the bottom 3 feet of the basement walls and jackhammer a couple feet of the floor away to install a French drain on the inside of the walls, which would make maintenance very easy. This was also $19,000.
- Waterproof the inside walls, tear down the bottom 3 feet of the basement walls, and jackhammer a couple feet of the floor away to install a French drain on the inside of the walls, which would make maintenance very easy. Only waterproofing the bottom third of the walls didn’t make any sense to me, so we got the entire wall waterproofed with the interior French drain for $6,000.
We got a discount for tearing down the wall ourselves, so we got to work.
They put a thick plastic sheet against the walls to catch any water that passes through the concrete (which shouldn’t happen because the French drain is supposed to relieve the pressure) and installed the French drain into the floor at the base of the exterior walls. They then put concrete over it all and called it a day.
We didn’t even try to find a contractor after all the headaches trying to find a contractor for the upstairs bathroom, so we decided to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It turns out that codes have changed since the 1960s and 1990s when the framing was completed the last time, so the walls weren’t built with a floating floor or with a layer of insulation against the concrete.
We knew the soil was expansive, but pulling up the carpet exposed some big cracks in the floor, so I figured that floating wall was important and tried to figure it out. Lina started by gluing a 1″ layer of foam insulation against the waterproofing on the wall. That meant that the room would be 1″ smaller on all the exterior walls. So I decided to try metal framing that was 1″ less deep to keep the room as large as we could seeing how wood construction prices were still through the roof.
I used a laser to install the floating section at the floor level with the top framing, but it turns out all that expansive soil bowed the wall in the middle, so the framing wouldn’t fit into the top and bottom at the same time to make the wall level. That meant that Lina had to scoop out the insulation behind the framing wherever the walls were bowed.
I know that regular plumbers are scared of boiler systems, so I assumed that there was something special about the plumbing. We brought in the guy who installed our boiler for a quote to put the heating system back together, and he quoted over $2,500 to get the job done. The parts were about $400 and I figured that I could learn out how to solder for $2000. It turns out it was relatively easy after a frustrating couple of hours because I had to solder something like 7 connections and a valve within an 8 inch span. Four times. It was pretty straightforward after I threw out 3 bad attempts. There was only one bad solder after that; and, ironically, it was the easiest joint . I also added removable couplings so we could remove the radiators without affecting the rest of the system. That turned out o be a godsend later on because I had to remove them twice during this whole process.
I also added an automatic bleeder in the bathroom because the last plumber who worked on the system didn’t bleed it properly and we would get bubbles travelling through the system at 2:00 am that would wake me up.
The electrical was straightforward after I got over a small mental block. I think I added two or three extra plugins. Then Lina put up all of the insulation. I couldn’t find any online and called 20 stores before I found the last few bundles in the country, it seemed. Then they gave me the wrong stuff. Good thing I checked before driving home, which took an hour each way.
Once the insulation was up, it was time to install the drywall. I used the water resistant drywall that is normally used in bathroom just in case.
Lina was supposed to do the mud, but she chickened out and our drywall guy luckily came in under my maximum price. So he mudded it up, Lina painted, and then we hung some wallpaper. The flowery paper in the bedroom was a removable wallpaper that used a plant-based starch glue. The trees in the main room were more like peel-and-stick stickers. We didn’t didn’t like the overlap on the tree sheets, but thought we would get over it. We haven’t yet.
We also replaced the ceiling lights with the same lights in the kitchen to brighten it up. Then we installed new baseboards and re-installed the Murphy bed.
We planned on installing some Ikea floor to ceiling wardrobes to store and hide all of Lina’s crap, but they were out of stock and are still out of stock three weeks later. It looks like I’ll be building them if stock doesn’t come in before the Tiki room chairs are upholstered. I also have to build a built in under the sink and we just noticed that the shelf for my oven in the dining room has collapsed, so it’s probably all for the best. I need the practice before I start on the Airstream anyway.
We’ve spent over $17,000 in repairs last year between the upstairs bathroom and the basement. Why are millennials so hot to own their own homes again?
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