Basement Wall #1 Framed

I got a little help from my friend and got a bunch of framing done, including the first wall with a pocket door.

Water Supply Upgrade

We got the water supply to our house upgraded last month. In order to take advantage of this increased pressure, we upgraded the main lines inside our house to 3/4" pipe this weekend; we now have 3/4" pipe through our water heater and to the main branches of our plumbing.

awan at Cibubur

An Old Man with his Bicycle

Green Farm at Ciater

Forestry at Ciater

Bee In The Summer at Ciater

Flower Garden Ciater

Sculpture

Forest

Plan for Sliding Doors

We have decided on a plan for the sliding doors to cover the appliances in the basement. We considered a number of different options for the sliding doors, including building them ourselves, but we finally decided on getting custom sliding doors from Komandor. It will be a while before the doors are installed as we need to finish the walls and flooring first, but it is nice to have another thing decided. The look we plan to go with is similar to the doors in the photo below, except we will have five doors spanning 14' ... and we won't have the fancy chandelier, shiny floors and generally spacious living area.

Beautiful Scenery

Beautiful Coastal Scenery

Stairwell Insulated

With the tight stairwell down to the basement, we did not have much space to add insulation. We installed 1" thick pieces of insulating styrofoam on that wall, which has an insulation value of R5. I expect this will do little for insulating the house, but hopefully with the addition of vapour barrier and drywall, at least this stairwell will not be drafty. With most of the house now insulated at R14-R28, this will be one of the "weak spots" in the building envelope.

$5 Pocket Doors

We were exploring different options for doors in our basement, and had decided that pocket doors would be the best option because they would save on space. Because the doors would have to be a bit of an odd height (i.e. short), we would need to custom build the pocket door frames and custom order the doors. I did not really like the look of the hollow core doors that are common today, so I dropped by our local Restore and got two old swinging doors for $5 each. These doors will blend well with the old swinging door from our kitchen (stained one on the right) once all three doors are cut down and painted. Total cost for all three doors: $10 including tax.

Storage Area Under Stairs Framed

With the stairs complete, my young apprentice helped me frame the walls underneath the stairs. In addition to framing out the storage area underneath the stairs, these framed walls provide additional support to the stringers. The exterior wall was then insulated with two layers of R14 insulation.

Palace at Night

Beautiful Scenery

Sky

Beautiful Sea

Ancol Beach

Ancol Beach Sunset

Royal Palace

Palace Beautiful

Scenery In The Mountains

The Landscape Beautiful City

Look Sunset On The Boat

Boat

The Beautiful City

Anchorage Ships

Bridge City

Landscape Sunset

Landscape

Sasuke

Detective Conan

3D

Basement Staircase 3 - Stairs

With the staircase planned and landing built, I proceeded to build the upper and lower sets of stairs. The first step was to draw out a stringer using a framing square, and then cut it out using a circular saw (to do the initial cut) and a jig saw (to finish the cut from the opposite side).

I then checked that the stringer fit the space and was level, and made a few minor adjustments. Once the stringer was perfect, I traced and copied it to make two more identical stringers. This process was followed to create the set of three 2x12 stringers for both the upper stairs and lower stairs.

The stringers were spaced out from the wall using a 2x4, leaving space for drywall (1/2") and a skirtboard (1"). The stringers were then secured to the landing and floor above/below, as well as the adjacent wall. Additional support walls would be added from underneath as well.

Treads and risers were then cut with a circular saw and installed using construction adhesive and flooring screws. We ended up with a rise of 7 1/4" and a run of 8" for each step, and were able to gain an inch from the width of the old stairs. The stairs were created with the intention of finishing with engineered wood, so at that time a bullnose will also be added.

... and the quality assurance department gave the stairs a passing grade.

Moving the Tub into the Basement

My brother came over to help with the house last weekend, so we went to Rona to pick up the bathtub for the basement. Julian had previously helped me move the clawfoot tub upstairs, so I could tell he wasn't looking forward to that task, but he soon learned that acrylic tubs are not nearly as heavy as their cast iron counterparts. The tub we selected is kind of big (8" wider than a standard tub), so I knew that moving it into the basement would be tricky. It did not fit into the side door, so we had to move the fridge out of the way and carry it down the empty abyss where we once had basement stairs. Kudos to our kitchen designers who suggested having the fridge space accessible like this for moving things into the basement. Not-so-kudos to us for not having cleaned under our fridge in two years.



The tub is now sitting in the basement patiently waiting to be installed.

Basement Staircase 2 - Landing

Prior to re-building the stairs, I spent quite a bit of time researching the project. I had purchased the book Building Stairs by Andy Engel when re-finishing the main floor stairs, and have found it to be an excellent resource for both projects.

We did not have much flexibility with the new stairs, as the location of the kitchen door and side door could not be changed. Drawing up the plans for the stairs was not too difficult, but I checked the measurements over and over to avoid duplicate work (and I did find a couple of errors along the way). I treated the landing like a big step, so the rise and run are consistent between the upper and lower staircase. It would have been nice to decrease the rise a bit and increase the run a bit, but that just was not possible with the location of the side door and first floor joists.

The first step in building the stairs was to frame the wall beside the stairwell.

Once that wall was in place, I installed the landing using 2x10's and 3/4" plywood. This landing is supported on one side by the framed wall and on the other side by a half wall and some openings in the bricks underneath the door.