Before:

I started by ripping everything out, right down to the cement walls, and then re-framed the whole basement.

I also added a bathroom, including doing the rough-in to the sewer line (I hired a pro to do the tie-in).

I also replaced the three basement windows, had the electrical panel upgraded from fuses to breakers, installed a sub-floor, added several new circuits and wiring, had closed-cell spray insulation installed, did the framing and drywall (though I did end up paying a pro to finish mudding).

Then new ceiling, lights, paint, flooring (laminate in laundry/bath, and had the pro’s do carpet elsewhere), plumbing fixtures and cabinets, doors, trim, media wiring, and just like that…

…I have a new basement.

After:

If you want to follow along and see details of this project along the way, check out the list of all the renovation posts.

Be sure to check out the One Project Closer blog, which regularly has some great articles on DIY projects, as well as their annual Before & After contest.

The laundry room is also quite functional, and provides enough space to dry clothes, have a few laundry baskets, and still have lots of room to move around.

Update: Before/after pics.

The carpet was one of the few things I was wise enough not to do myself, so I don’t have a ton of pictures of the progress (also I was on a conference call most of the morning while it was being put in). Here’s the underpad installed, ready for the carpet.

It’s very nice to finally have this part done. It’s been a long time coming. We moved in last August, and I started ripping stuff out pretty much right away. So total time taken: about 15 months. Now, to put it in perspective, this was entirely done on nights and weekends, and like any project like this there were weekends where I was away and other weeks where I just got nothing done. I also wasted about 3 months slowly starting to do some of the drywall mudding and taping, before finally wising up and paying a pro to do it.

I will follow up with some before/after photos. I’m also going to try and document some of the other things I’m doing related to the basement (though not directly renovation), like my scene-capable lighting and networked media system. Also, although the renovation part of this blog is probably going to be quiet for a while, I do have some more major reno projects planned for next year, so stay tuned.

I also finished terminating the network cables for the basement (10 drops). Since I was rushing to get them in before the insulation was done, I didn’t actually label any of the wires. Luckily, I have a wire tracer, which is an extremely handy tool for these sorts of situations. Plug in the base unit to the jack you want to find..

.. and then the indicator will make noise when you find the corresponding cable in your bundle.

I punched these cables down to the patch panel in the makeshift relay rack in my crawlspace.

It’s almost a shame I’ll have furniture hiding everything from view..

I spent some time trying to decide how to finish the fridge cubby hole, then ended up using some stop molding for the edges (the baseboard I had was too thick, and too large for a tiny space you shouldn’t really notice), and some corner guard for the end. I sanded it down so the edges extend out a bit and are rounded down.

I also installed the plinth in the laundry room, which is just a piece of 1″ pine (same as I used for the window sills) painted white. I had to notch out space to make room for the cabinet legs, and then mitered the two pieces together.

In the bathroom, I had one small challenge, which was a bit of an oversight on my part many months ago, during the plumbing rough-in phase: the toilet supply valve is below the top of the baseboard. I debated what to do with this for a while, and ended up cutting a notch into the baseboard, filling it with putty (to avoid seeing the ugly MDF “grain”), sanding and painting it. It turned out reasonably nicely, even if it does look a bit weird.

With this, both the laundry room and bathroom are now complete!

In the corner of the laundry room, I have a bulkhead that runs a 4″ dryer vent up and outside. I also have an air conditioning line that runs outside, and happens to drop down lower than my ceiling will be. It extends out close to a foot into the room before it gets high enough to not be a problem.

I ended up finding a cabinet that would fit above the washer/dryer, and built a bulkhead to fit around the A/C line, but that would fit with the cabinet so I didn’t have a strange bulkhead sticking down. This was big enough to cover the line, but also not look too unnatural. I built a frame from some spare pieces I had left over, and screwed it into the wall. Note, this does go over part of the drywall.. but unfortunately I didn’t have a solution to this when I put the drywall up, so that’s the way it goes.

After some drywall and mudding..

..I have a finished cabinet, and bulkhead covering the tiny, unfortunately placed A/C line.

I basically used the area inside the crawlspace to build a 2′ x 3′ room, and then provided access to it in the lower half of the wall joining the crawlspace. Here’s a couple pictures from earlier in construction to give you a better idea:

It’s hard to see, but it’s actually elevated a bit because there is a row of cinder blocks separating the main basement from the crawlspace, so I just built the floor of the cubby hole to the same height as the top of the blocks. The second cubby hole you see is for a bar fridge (there is a power outlet inside that one, which is not visible in this picture) – the fridge will basically just be flush with the wall. Again, this was just a way to get more out of the space I had – it adds a fridge into what would otherwise just be a plain wall.

I also installed a vent in the top to try and keep it not overly stinky and allow some air circulation (I may put a small fan in the vent, if necessary). There’s another vent in the fridge area to allow heat to escape out the top.

After cutting down the door to fit, I also installed an actual cat door (one of those flapping ones). I basically just took my jigsaw and cut out the trace of the door.

I had trouble finding a pet door actually, I had to go to a pet store and they only had this one and a really fancy one which used RFID tags to only allow in your pet (which is a great idea, if you are installing this on an exterior door). The problem with this is that it looks like it’s designed for either a solid core door, or a 1/4″ thick door. When you put the two pieces on, they do not connect – so with my hollow core doors, there would otherwise be a giant gap between them. I ended up using some 1 1/8″ pine to fill in around the hole, and then painted it to match the door.

The end result looks pretty good (considering what it is). Obviously I’d rather not have this at all, but the weird door with the cat door in it looks better (in my opinion) than a litter box sitting in the open. I’m not going to actually install the pet door yet though – I want to make sure my cat learns she has to go in there to do her business before also having to learn how the flap works. The consequences to the new carpet are just not worth risking it..

The bi-fold doors were pretty straight-forward. One was actually one left over from the previous owners, in the crawl space, which just happened to be the right size. I cleaned and painted it, and replaced all the track hardware in it.

The bi-fold in the laundry room was a bit too big – I had a 34″ opening, but all you can get are 32″ or 36″ doors (off the shelf at box stores, at least). I bought a 36″, and cut an inch off each side. There was enough wood in the edge that I didn’t have to do anything extra to it.

Having installed several door knobs before, I decided to buy a kit for it. It’s basically a plastic template that guides a hole saw to drill the right places. This thing was $20, and included the template, two hole saws, a hinge template, and a router template for the strike plate. The hole saws that come with it definitely aren’t the best quality – one had a couple teeth noticeably longer than the rest – but they do work, and you could always use your own, if you have the right size.

It made quick work of the door. The router bit definitely made the strike plate easy – you just follow the template, and then chisel out what is missing.

The hinge template was utterly useless for me. It was 4″ high, but 1″ deep – a standard 3.5″ hinge is 1″ deep, but a 4″ hinge is 1.25″ deep. This means using a 4″ hinge would have more of the hinge sticking out the back, and a wider swing to the door (meaning you need greater space between the door and the jamb, to make sure it doesn’t stick). I didn’t even try to use it at all, and just chiseled out the hinges by hand, after tracing them with a pencil.

I have a short door for access to the crawl space. This was just a standard hollow door that I cut down. I set up my table saw for 1 1/8″, and cut a few strips of pine board to fill in the gap left at the cut. It’s possible to use the piece you cut off, but I found it was glued so well to the hardboard of the door, that it wasn’t worth the effort. Since it’s also on the bottom of the doors, it’s not visible at all so the fact that it looks slightly different doesn’t really matter. I used some glue and a couple brad nails to hold the piece in place.

There’s also another little door which I’ll cover in tomorrow’s post.

I also had to cut down both the laundry room and bathroom doors, as they are ~74″ (instead of standard 80″) because they’re under the vent and beams for the house. I used the same technique as before and just used the 1 1/8″ pine board to fill in the bottom from where I cut.

I should also mention, I was originally going to use panel doors (the ones with the bevels you see everywhere), but quickly discovered that because of my sizing, it really made cutting the doors much more difficult, since you have to worry about keeping the pieces of panels centered. For my short doors, they didn’t work out at all, and basically there was no way to cut them without cutting at the bevel marker. Since my upstairs interior doors are also all the plain flat ones, it wasn’t that big a decision to keep the downstairs ones the same, and simplify cutting at the same time. If you have non-standard door sizes, really be aware of that before hand, especially if you are building new doors like I was (not that I had that much choice in door sizes, without radically changing the overall layout). You may end up being forced to order custom doors or change styles.

The sink came with a template, so I traced that onto the countertop with a sharpie, use a hole saw on the edge to start it off, and then cut out the shape with a jigsaw.

Almost constantly, the box stores have different promotions going on (eg, I bought the cabinets during a 10% off all kitchen cabinets sale), and I’ve tried to take advantage of these as much as I can. I went to get a sink during one such event, but it was out of stock, and I was at the point I actually needed one, so I ended up buying a much more expensive 10″ deep sink (most are 7″), but in hindsight this is a much better sink to use for the laundry room so I’m actually glad it worked out this way.

While doing the final hookups, I was again reminded why I like PEX so much. It took me maybe a bit more thna 5 minutes to crimp on all the valves, and probably 45 minutes driving time for the $8 tool rental (ok that slightly annoys me, but it likely would have taken longer to it with copper, especially when you factor in draining basically the entire house, which is unnecessary with PEX). All the vales are PEX 1/4 turn stainless ball vales, except the toilet which is a more traditional valve which looks a bit nicer.

On the laundry room, it’s probably worth showing the in-wall washing machine hookup, which worked out quite nicely. Now that I have the flooring in, I replaced the old rubber hoses with some stainless braided hoses. You can see an old photo with the plumbing exposed here.

I bought everything for the bathroom on sale almost a year ago, and have been storing it in the crawlspace since then. As it turns out I’ve seen the cabinet on sale since, but it was still more expensive than what I paid. The toilet is a dual-flush, and otherwise your typical round toilet.

Having the small cabinet (24″ x 12″) works well – the sink is large enough, but with the cabinet itself being smaller, it gives a bit more floor space, and makes the room feel a bit bigger. Since the bathroom is only 5×5′, this is important. I should also mention that Jocelyn has helped with the bathroom a lot: picking out and installing the toilet paper roll, mirror, and toilet seat.

Check out an old post on doing the bathroom rough-in for details of all the plumbing.

I’ve been borrowing Jocelyn’s dad’s mitre saw almost since I started this project, but I’ve used it so much that I decided it was time to buy my own. After looking at several, I settled on a Craftsman 10″ sliding compound mitre saw. There were three of these that almost looked identical, but differed in price by about $130. The people at Sears could not tell me the difference, other than one, which was ~$250 CDN, has arms that extend out from the base, so that’s what I ended up buying. So far, I’ve been quite happy with it and would recommend it without hesitation. The laser is pretty accurate, and the positive miter stops make doing the different angles for trim very easy.

Update: Part 2 – Finishing baseboard.