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Serving at the Pleasure of the King

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Don’t give a chicken access to your schedule / feature set

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.