2nd House Remodel: Basement Part 2 - Issues

I mentioned in my first post on this topic that there were several issues to resolve.  I'll try to document the issues and solutions here, along with any pictures that help to illustrate.  

Family room, utility room, possible office?

Rec room problem area, north is up

The furnace and hot water heater were located to the west of the stairs in a fairly "in-the-way" spot, obstructing part of the rec room and creating an odd corner. I wanted to use the area on the other side for a family room, so at one point I thought I would turn it into an odd-shaped office room.  I planned to locate the TV/entertainment center along the west wall.  After debating and even framing in this office area, I decided instead to build a fireplace here and make it the focal point of the family room, locating the TV now on the north wall above the fireplace. You might have seen in my first, rather unimaginative, plan above that I placed the door on the west side of the utility room.  This was ultimate changed to the south side of the room.  I used the east side of this room as part of the kitchenette area, with the single bathroom in the basement around the corner, also surrounding the kitchenette.  This design stayed roughly the same as I made further iterations to the layout.  Another interesting, though unseen, feature is the set of 2x8s I installed above the fireplace so that the frame could hold a large, heavy TV.  You may note as you compare earlier and later pictures of this area that we upgraded our own TV.  ;). Here are some progress pictures of the area.

Framed

Sheet rocked

Mostly Finished (shelves added to the left a couple years later)

With TV

Hiding support columns

There are support columns located roughly where you see the little dots in the first drawing in post number 1 (click here).  The room on the north-east side ended up not being a finished space, rather it became my workshop/work-out room.  So I didn't have to make any attempts to hide that support column.  3 other support columns were able to be hidden: one inside the utility room and 2 others hidden in the closet of the largest bedroom, framed around some shelving.  For the last, the one in the kitchenette area, I chose to emphasize it and just frame a large (about 1ft x 1ft) column and trim it nicely.

Kitchenette post framed

Kitchenette post sheet rocked

Kitchenette post finished

Large bedroom closet posts before

  

Large bedroom closet posts framed (upper left you can see part of the 2 posts)

Large bedroom closet posts partially finished (no shelving yet)

Large bedroom closet posts finished (shelving and stuff)

Low clearance and wiring

Having previously done some structured cabling (network and phone mostly), I wanted to make sure that I set up the basement in a way that I could always provide access for future wiring projects or other modifications that might require similar access.  Not only did I want this for the basement, but also for the entire house.  It just so happened that I had an issue which helped me decide what to do.  There is very low clearance in about 1/4 of the basement due to ventilation and support I-beams  running on the north side of much of the basement family room, utility room, kitchenette, and rec room areas.  

I decided to to drop the ceiling down from the 8ft height every else about 13 inches to accommodate the various obstructions and provide for 1 consistent ceiling height throughout most of the north part of the basement.  This also gave me the clearance I needed to allow for additional wiring, plumbing, or whatever else might be needed in the future.  

The only areas I did not use this ceiling height were the bathroom and the rec room area outside the 2 bedrooms.  The bathroom only had a couple small gas lines coming just below the joists, so I dropped the ceiling a few inches to cover that in one place, but left the rest of the ceiling height at 8 feet.  The area outside the 2 bedrooms had some pipes and other small obstructions, which I decide to simply cover with the same ceiling height, rather than introducing yet another ceiling height in one small area.  It worked well since this area is sort of like a hallway in that area of the basement.

Also, the electrical box happened to be located under the low clearance area in the family room, right next to the planned spot for the fireplace.  I decided to make a small wiring closet and terminate all of the network, phone, and cable/antenna connections in that closet.  

Last, I drilled holes through the floor up into a wall in the hallway outside our master bedroom up into the attic above the west side of the house so that I could have access to drop wiring throughout the main floor.  There is a small crawlspace, probably 4 feet high by 15 feet, over our family vaulted ceilings where wiring could be dropped into the bedrooms on the east side of the house.

Another interesting thing I did was to put network, TV, and RCA-type connections and cabling in the fireplace area so that a TV could easily be connected for either internet-enabled TV or a Roku-type box.  I also connected the TV back to one of the shelves on either side of the fireplace so that a small console device like a Wii or PlayStation could be connected to the TV without having to necessarily sit on the mantle.  

Mostly framed wiring closet

Wiring closet and dropped ceiling over fireplace in family room.
Part of utility room shown.

Kitchenette/rec room area showing dropped ceiling

Partially finished family room fireplace area, showing wiring
closet and some boxes for TV/network connections

Mostly finished wiring closet and fireplace area, showing shelf
to the right for connecting other devices to TV.

Finished dropped ceiling in kitchenette/rec room area.
Note the portion where the ceiling juts out towards the 2nd bedroom.

Another view of the "jut".  Is that a word?

Shows the lip over the shower in the basement bathroom
where I dropped the ceiling a few inches to cover the gas lines.

Ledges

We had partial foundation walls, about 3.5ft tall wrapping around about 20 feet along the SE and SW corners of the house.  I chose to make some ledges out of these walls, rather than close off the wasted space with a solid floor to ceiling wall.  In my initial attempt I just used some 1x8 which left very little lip over the edge of the short walls. I was never pleased with them, so later I replaced them with 1x10 and 1x12 and some trim to finish them off.  I'll have another post later about that.  Another small issue was the supply line for the house on the SW corner of the house.  It sat right above the ledge in the family room, so I built another partial column around it, similar to the column in the kitchen.  So rather than the ledge wrapping completely around that corner of the house, it stops several inches from the back of the house and picks up again on the other side of the corner.

Family room ledge before

Family room ledge partially sheet rocked

Family room ledge finished, also hose supply covered by column

Large bedroom ledge sheet rocked

Large bedroom ledge finished

Odds and ends

In one of my earliest designs, I had no intention of closing in the area next to the entry, to the east of it.  It just seemed odd to me to carve out a space that might include the large window on the east side of the entry door.  Over time, though, I decided it would be the best use of space as I modified my design to create the workshop and make a larger bedroom in the SE corner of the house.  I finally figured that it was only odd viewing it from the outside, which you can't really even see from outside.  Inside, you don't even notice that the windows were originally part of a matched set.

View of entry door with 2 windows on either side.  Window to the left is where the small bedroom is now.

View of small bedroom showing the window.

View of entry door, now separated from the left window.

Another view of the window, sheet-rocked

Outside view of the door and 2 windows before we bought the house.

Similar to the support posts in the large bedroom walk-in closet, there is a drain from the spare share on the main floor on the east side of the closet.  I simply closed a box around it and ultimately hung the shelving and closet pole from this corner.

Large bedroom closet, the 2x4 dropping down vertically on the far right of the
photo is the outside corner of the corner built around the drain.

Closet pole and shelving hung from the corner.

There were other, much smaller issues, too many to mention.  There were also some issues like deciding what to do with the space under the stairs, on which you will see a project post later.

That's it for today!

2nd House Remodel: Basement Part 1 - Planning

A new house means no projects, right?

After 3 years in our first home, we found it was time to move on.  We probably should have waited a little longer and purchased a larger home, but you live and you learn.  

We bought a new house this time.  It's odd how your tastes progress over the years, but at this time we wanted a new home.  It was a spec home, so we were only able to pick the appliances and that was it.  That's one of the things we have lamented the last several years, not having the choice of carpet, paint/stain colors, and a few other small customizations.  

The most intriguing thing about this house was the full, unfinished basement.  The house has a little over 1500 square feet on the main floor, which meant I had just a little less than that to finish in the basement. In total we had about 1450 square feet that could be finished, and we finished about 1300 of it.  For a guy who has no background in construction, this was daunting, but I was enthusiastic about the possibilities.

You can see in the first picture below the original basement layout on top.  The second drawing was an early design, one I quickly abandoned because it made very poor use of the space available.  The arrow points North.  On the north side of the stairs, there is a storm shelter, which is actually located under our front porch.  I added some storage shelving in there, plus electrical and some utility lighting.  This was not part of the available 1450 square feet we could finish.  

The drawings, especially the 3D rendering below, were very helpful in visualizing what the basement would look like when it was done.  I actually started by measuring to get all of the dimensions, then I used chalk to mark off walls to get a sense of where things might best be placed.  I found that it wasn't terribly important to know exactly where each wall was going to fall, rather I was a bit flexible as I encountered various issues and adapted, albeit in small ways, to address those issues.  If you have not finished a basement before, you must recognize that a basement will always look like a basement, but the most challenging part of the job, at least intellectually, is figuring out the best way to cover up some of the more obtrusive "features" of the typical basement.  More about these in future posts.

Unfinished layout and first design

Final-ish design, North is up

Since I didn't label the original drawing, here is a walk-through.  West side is the family room (1), followed west to east by the utility room (2), kitchenette (3), and rec room (4).  Just north of the kitchenette is the full bath (5).  South of the kitchenette is the small bedroom/office (6), which isn't technically considered a bedroom because we don't have a working window.  East of that is the large bedroom (7), with a walk-in closet (8) to the north of it (no door in this drawing).  North of that is the workshop/work-out room (9).  To the west of the workshop is the stairs (10).  North of bathroom is the storm shelter (11)

Some Before Pictures

View from large bedroom area into workshop area

View from eventual family room area of basement walkout entrance and small bedroom

View from rec room area into storm shelter

View from family room area of rec room area and 2 bedrooms, utility room

View from kitchenette area into utility room area, part of bathroom vent/drain

View of large bedroom area

View of small bedroom area and basement entrance, part of family room

View from stairs landing of family room, kitchenette, and utility areas

View from stairs landing of kitchenette and utility areas

Check back very soon for more posts!

Remodel 101 Part 3 - Bathroom

You know how I said the kitchen remodel wasn't very exciting?  Well, the bathroom remodel was definitely exciting, or something resembling exciting.  I've grown to love remodeling bathrooms, but it was not so much of a love, or even a love-hate relationship.  You'll see why.  No complete before pictures here either, but you'll get the idea.

Problem #1: Painted tile.

What?  Yes, that's right.  They painted the original ceramic tile, a rust color circa 1956, with ordinary beige interior paint. Also original was the bathroom vanity, as I am sure you can see.

And yes, they painted the wall tile, too.

The toilet had at least been replaced since then, so we kept it. The previous owner installed ceramic floor tile, so I'm sure they replaced the toilet at that point. 

 This thing absolutely had to go.  There was nothing for it. And here starts the exciting part.  I don't really like plumbing. I have only ever done fixture plumbing, basically no rough plumbing. There are so many things not to like.  Obviously the mess from past water damage is high on the list.  The musty smell helps some, you know. And then all the tight spaces below knee level. That really saves your knees and back.

This is what it looked like after I removed the vanity and surrounding tile. I had a fair amount of clean-up to do before I could install the new vanity. This was a long weekend.  I wasn't very familiar with the parts I needed, so I probably took 4 or 5 trips to Home Depot in the course of 2 days.

Here are a few shots of the finished project.  You'll notice a pattern with the further use of green.  You can only see part of the new vanity here. Some new bath hardware in the new towel rod and ring.

I installed white bead-board and some trim over the previously tiled area. I was pretty pleased with the end-result.  The room just felt cleaner.

There were a number of smaller projects, but we were not very good at capturing pictures, so I'll describe a few.  

New paint throughout the house, with a few back-and-forth attempts with darker and lighter paint in the living room.  This ultimately led to a two-tone room.

This was some of Laura's work.  She used some stencils to paint on an Americana border.  I think it turned out well.

The rest of the house got some neutral colors.

The next project was pretty fun, and very pleasing.  The doors were original, plain, hollow wood panel doors.  They were terribly outdated, had several coats of paint on them, brass knobs, chipped.  You get the point.

I replaced all of the closet and entry doors through the house with 6 panel, moulded doors.