I haven’t done a lot of drywall (a couple of wall sections, and more recently the headers for the upstairs closets), but I think we did pretty well. There were some complicated cuts to do. You can also see in this picture how the drywall is covering the window completely, and I started to cut it out. This method is supposed to make a stronger wall around the window (as opposed to having seams at the corners), even though it does mean there is quite a bit of waste.

One other thing I did was insulate the wall between the main room, and the laundry and furnace rooms, to try and reduce noise. Since I’m not drywalling the interior walls in the furnace room, I put up some plastic sheets to cover the insulation. The media wiring going to the TV is behind this, so if I do need to change wiring it’s just a matter of pulling the plastic back, and then stapling it back down when I’m done. The plastic is the same stuff I used under the footers of the exterior walls, made into a larger sheet with tuck tape.

I’m not drywalling the ceiling, as I’ll be putting in a suspended ceiling instead. I’m hoping the acoustic tiles will be okay for damping noise from upstairs, but worst case I can take tiles out, and put insulation above it.

One other thing I’ll note - I was originally going to use Roxul insulation instead of fiberglass, but when I bought this insulation to put behind the electrical box (before the real insulation was put in), there was no Roxul in stock, so I had to go this way. This insulation is just the left over stuff from that project (which is like 80% of the bag) so it didn’t make sense to trash it and buy new stuff.

I’ll be mounting an LCD TV to the wall, and so I put in a recessed media box to hold all the cables. There’s also a 110v plug inside this box.

I really like the idea behind this (as opposed to putting keystone jacks behind the TV) since it means one less connection for all the wires, the excess wires tuck inside the box, and it’s easy to add to later. To make sure of this, I put in two 2″ x 5′ lengths of conduit, which is actually 2″ PVC central vac piping. I like this stuff because it’s mostly rigid, but bends enough to install it in the wall, and the actual pipe is very thin - which means for a 2″ outside diameter, I have 1 7/8″ inside diameter.

The open end is right beside the furnace, which I’ll be able to get at since I’m not drywalling the inside of the furnace room. The same wall is where the back of the jacks are, so it will be easy to add new wiring/jacks as needed in the future.

To the TV, I have two HDMI cables, one component video, one composite video, and stereo RCA. I also have wiring for 5 speakers. I’m not buying into this 7/9/whatever channel stuff yet - I thought about it, but I don’t know how the room will be set up exactly, so it’s too hard to predict where speakers should go. If I do need to go that route, I can run wires since it’s a suspended ceiling, and I have drilled 1″ holes in the tops of all the headers so I can drop wires down into the wall cavity. For now I’m happy with my 5.1 channels.

There are also two Cat 5e network drops, and one RG-6 coaxial cable, which all go back to the patch panel in the crawlspace.

I also ran cables over to where my desk will go - one set of component video (which can also be used as composite video, stereo RCA or digital audio), and one HDMI - which terminate beside the rest of the jacks for the TV. The idea here is that I can have my computer on the TV, or play music through the main sound system, or whatever. Also at the desk is one RG-6 coaxial cable and four Cat 5e network drops (which again go back to the patch panel).

I’ve also finished up the electrical at this point. There are two separate circuits for plugs in the main rec room, one circuit for the laundry room, and one for the bathroom (which is shared with the upstairs bathroom). There is also another circuit dedicated to the lights. I personally hate when the lights in a room are on the same breaker as the plugs, as it means whenever you’re doing work on something electrical, you have to run power for lights from another room. It’s pretty trivial, but since I’m redoing all the wiring, it’s not any extra work to do it this way (besides installing maybe one more breaker).

Now that all the wiring is in place, I’m finally ready to move on to the drywall..

One issue I had was that the top of the window was actually above the gas and water lines, so once I added a ceiling to the laundry room, the window would have been above it. Since I was replacing the window anyways, the new one is shorter, at 40″ x 18″, and otherwise exactly identical to the front windows. This also meant I would be left with a 6″ gap at the top of the window, so I started by building a new frame. I used tapcons to anchor in the side pieces to the concrete, and then put a piece across connecting the two. This will also serve to anchor the new window in place.

It’s a bit hard to make out, but there is a bit of a lip (about 3/4″ wide) in the concrete, centered below the piece of 2×4 in this photo. They obviously poured the concrete with the old frame in place. I decided not to chip this out, and instead to just center the window on it and fill it with foam to insulate.

I put the new window in, and anchored it to the concrete with a couple of tapcons on each side, and a couple of wood screws to the wood above. I used a piece of 5/8″ OSB to fill in the 6″ gap on the outside. The black wire you can see in the photos is my cable line, which previously went through the window frame. I mostly kept it connected while I was working because I was listening to an online radio stream at the time. What can I say - the regular radio stations here suck.

I used a piece of flashing, which pretty much fit perfectly, to cover the OSB from the outside. I just glued it on with a construction adhesive, and then went around all the edges with some caulk. I also put some low-expansion foam in both the front and back of the concrete lip, all the way around the window.

On the inside, I put 2″ of rigid foam board against the OSB, and then sealed the gaps all around it with foam. I should also point out that having learned what a pain it is when the foam hardens on the window surface, I used painter’s tape to protect the window frame. I highly recommend doing this, as it made cleaning up the spots where the foam expands out very simple. On the front windows, I only had a couple places where it hardened onto the front, but it took me a long time to scrape it all off.

After giving the foam a day to harden, I added some framing to the interior wall to fill in the top part of the window so I have something to attach the drywall to. I also took another can of some other foam (which was for gaps 2″ or less - I really could have used the 2″ or greater, but this was all I had on hand) and went over all the wood pieces and everything that felt cold. I likely will take another can (maybe 2) and do this again. Nothing is cold now, but there is not really that much insulation above the window compared to the rest of the basement. Also note I stapled some cardboard along the bottom, to prevent the foam from falling down into the window.

Once this was all done, I used some of the same all-PVC trim to fill in the gaps from the outside, and used some exterior caulk to seal everything up. I probably could have done a better job here, but it was very cold out and I was rushing to get it done. If it looks terrible in the spring, I’ll probably redo some of it - but for now, it keeps the cold and water out, and that’s what’s important.

I cut a hole for a 2-gang box in the wall, and ran a wire down there, beside the central vac pipe, and down through the floor into the basement. This was actually pretty simple since there is a return air vent on the other side of the bathroom wall. You can see the picture below, looking down from the hole I cut in the wall at the central vac pipe. On a side note, I’ve found this to be a very effective way of figuring out where to run wires (or just generally see in tight places) while I’m working. I may change my mind if I ever drop the camera into the wall cavity, but until then it’s been very helpful and saved a lot of guessing and extra work.

I replaced the light switch with a dimmer, and replaced the old plug with a timer which will eventually be used to control an exhaust fan. The plugs are both GFCI-protected, and are now on a dedicated circuit along with the downstairs bathroom plug. Being a 33-year old house, the old plug was on the same circuit as the bathroom light, hallway, and most of the plugs in two bedrooms. I also ended up adding a plug in the hallway (probably the only real use will be the power brush for the vacuum cleaner).

And yet, even though I am basically never home during the day, I cannot get them to not try to deliver a package to my front door. They put my package on their truck, drive it to my house, and then drive around with it all day, before bringing it back to their warehouse, where they repeat the same process for the next two days. Finally, they leave it in their warehouse, and I can finally stop by after work to pick up the package.

I’ve previously emailed their customer center, and asked them if there is a way to set up my address so the package is always held. Apparently, this is not possible - the best I can do is open an account at a UPS Store, and then have it delivered there (which also means registering the UPS store as a valid shipping address on my credit card). I’m also assuming that opening the account is not free.. so I have to pay them for the privilege of not wasting their drivers time and gas attempting deliveries. That’s innovative.

To send it to my office, I have to add my work address as a shipping address on my credit card, and waste my co-workers time dealing with my personal shipments. This doesn’t really seem like the best way to handle this, although this is probably what I will do from now on.

Today, they’ve only tried to deliver my package once so far. I tried to request my package be held via their website (which both their website and phone system say is possible), but I simply cannot figure it out. I can track the package.. but even after creating an account, I see no way to modify anything about this shipment. So I gave up, and called the number on the notice they left me, again, and this time pressed 0 until it let me speak to a real person. (And then said yes about 8 times, because yes, I really do want to speak to a person.)

Finally the agent was able to stop them from trying to deliver.. maybe. It might have been too late, so they may try tomorrow again anyways. I asked if in the future, I could just call as soon as I got my tracking number. She admitted it would sound strange, but apparently, no. I can’t do this. They have to try to deliver it at least once first.

So even though this package gets from the other corner of the continent and across an international border in just over a day, it is doomed to be driven around in a truck pointlessly for at least two days, and stored in a warehouse over the weekend.

I must have a different definition of “efficient” than UPS does.

The outside vent was fairly cheap, and although it had a damper, it was stuck open due to the cold and the warped plastic shell. This mean that basically, cold air and snow could blow into the house through the vent, effectively into the back of my dryer.

I pulled the old vent out, which basically broke into pieces while I was removing it. In case you were wondering. chipping tiny pieces of plastic stuck to 30-year-old caulk in -15°C weather is not fun.

It took a bit of cutting and caulk to get the new vent to fit nicely with the siding, but it works.

I built a small box in the corner for the vent to go through, but then ended up rebuilding after the insulation was in because I realized the vent was sticking out the wrong way, and the dryer would have had to be too far from the wall to connect to it.

I used a piece of semi-rigid 4″ pipe to make the connection from the outside vent into the box, and then a 5′ section of straight 4″ vent, into an elbow to come out of the wall. At the very bottom, I added a 4″ damper as well, to provide some extra protection in case the outside damper gets stuck or clogged with dryer lint, etc. This is pretty cheap, and it will still be accessible to clean once the drywall is up.

When done, the dryer will be about 6″ from the wall.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m using a spray-in foam insulation (HeatLok, though I wasn’t looking for a particular brand when finding a contractor to do it, it’s just the one mine - Frontenac Foam Insulation - used). There are some great benefits to this stuff:

• High R-value per inch (this stuff is around R-7 per inch - compare to fibre-glass batt insulation, at about R-2.5 per inch);
• Doesn’t take up much space. I was able to use 2×4 framing, and only put the frame out about an inch from the cement wall. With fibre-glass or rigid insulation, I’d have to build out a thicker wall, possibly using 2×6’s, and effectively make the room a tiny bit smaller. When you don’t have a ton of space to begin with, losing 20 sqft is significant.
• No vapour barrier required.
• Easy to install. Well, aside from the fact I had a contractor do it for me, it’s easy to install on uneven walls because it just conforms to the wall shape. Since I had some parts of the cement sticking out farther from the frames when they poured it, as well as a brick/wood framed half wall at the front of the house (see pics below), it would have been very difficult to install rigid insulation, since if you leave air gaps between the insulation and the concrete, you can have moisture problems.

On the downside, it is quite a bit more expensive than other types of insulation, however, I hope to offset this with a grant from the eco-Energy Retrofit Program. Unfortunately, I had this done just days before the recently-announced federal renovation tax credit, so I can’t qualify for that.

It took them about 40 minutes to warm up the foam in the truck before starting (it was about -15°C out), and about 2.5 hours to install it all. They basically have a big truck with a tank full of foam in it, and a pump, and then a long hose coming inside to a spray gun, which mixes the components of the foam and I think uses compressed air to spray the foam onto the wall, where it then expands.

Here are some before/after pictures:

The front of my house has an overhang, and so they put foam all inside that as well.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a draft in the far corner, where it was hard to get the nozzle in (they actually had to notch out a piece of the frame to get inside, which you can see in the pic below). Before they left, they mentioned that it might not have gotten all the way back, so they came back a few days later with a type of foam that expands more and actually filled all the headers in, and now there are no drafts and it is very warm.

The first foam they put in (blue) feels like hard styrofoam. The higher-expanding stuff (yellow) feels a lot squishier. As to be expected, this made a huge improvement in not only the basement temperature but in the overall house temperature, and my furnace runs a lot less often now. A bit unexpected, the basement is actually warmer than the main floor of the house now!

You can also see why I was trying to get anything that needed a hole outside done before the insulation (like the bathroom vent - compare to this picture); not that it is impossible now, it just means I would have to drill through an extra few inches of foam, and then seal it all back up again when I’m done.

I also ran a new plug outside, as I did not have a plug in the back yard, and a new wire to the plug beside my driveway. The driveway plug has been unhooked since shortly after I moved in and found a scary/confusing contraption involving old NM wire, extension cord plugs, and a switch, branched off from another random circuit. I unfortunately didn’t take a picture of this, but I didn’t really want it hooked up (especially not when I had to get an electrical inspection done for insurance). The outside plugs are on their own dedicated circuit.

I have another outside plug on the front of the house which is tied into a circuit shared with a bedroom and some lights. I was going to run a new circuit for it, but the wires were routed in a way that made it impossible to fish a new wire through, and there was no way to legally put in a junction box to use the existing wires. In the end I decided it was not a big deal, so I just left it.

One of the last things I had to remove from the original basement were the plugs for the washer and dryer. Both of them were mounted on a piece of wood, directly on the cement foundation, so of course they had to be moved before the insulation could be sprayed in.

The wires for both of these old circuits were aluminum. I kept the dryer wire, and just ran it to a new insulated box, mounted lower down the wall (luckily there was a few extra feet up in the header area, for some reason). Aluminum is really not too bad to work with. The biggest thing is that all connections need to have an anti-oxidant paste applied to them, and they need to be connected using aluminum-rated parts. In this case I’m just using the old dryer plug, which is CO/ALR-rated. The picture here is me applying the paste before connecting the wires.

Once finished, I pulled the mounting boards off the wall and removed the old wire.

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While I was removing the old washing machine wire, I came across a part of it that was covered by black tape, tucked up in the header above the window. I took the tape off, and found a cut with some exposed wiring (it’s just the ground, but even so..). You never know what you’re going to find, and had I never replaced this wire, I probably never would have noticed.

Of course the exhaust air needs a place to go, so that meant adding a new vent. One thing I learned: big drill + putting a hole in the side of the house; not something girlfriends like to be involved with. I used a 3.25″ hole saw, which did the job nicely.

I used flexible duct, and some foil tape and clamps to keep everything together. It’s starting to get crowded in the electrical closet as you can see.

The outside vent and the fan itself both have dampers built-in, so I’m hoping I won’t have any issues with cold air coming down. I’ve checked on a couple of cold, windy day’s we’ve had lately, and can’t feel anything so it looks promising. In my old apartment, the exhaust fan either had no damper (or it was broken), and it was quite awful during the winter to feel the -20 degree air blowing on you first thing in the morning.