Basement Stairs and Another Wall Insulated

Saturday I worked hard to get another wall in my basement insulated. The trick with this wall, the basement stairs were right against the wall. I thought about this for about two weeks and then made my plan. Everything went just as planned--for once! This project had a massive potential for making big problems at my house. Without the stairs, we can't do laundry. If my wife misses one day without putting in laundry, the basement gets filled up!

To begin, I removed the steps. I used a circular saw to cut each stair down the middle. I then took my hammer and hit each part out of the dado created for each step. There were about five huge nails in each side of the stringers holding each step. Total over kill. I then took off one stringer and slide it out of my way. I cleaned and then painted the wall with a basement waterproofing paint. The wall was in good shape which meant I only had to fill in a few cracks with mortar.

Under our stairs there was a makeshift shelving system. I've always hated it and planned to redo it someday. Someday was Saturday. Discovered the entire stair system was being held up by two 2x4s! We dodged another bullet there. I beefed up the supports under the stairs with 4x4s and a studded wall. The stud wall really gives the entire platform good support now.

The wall was again treated with insulated foam board. This was also put behind the shelves.

The last step was to measure and cut new steps. The new steps were 29 1/2" wide. After a little trouble, I got them all in. I added 2x4 supports under each step to give them more strength. The steps will be carpeted so I used regular 2x10s for the stairs. If we wanted, we could have installed oak stairs but that would have raised the cost, big time. Carpeted stairs are fine for our basement remodel.

Really amazing how much warmer our basement is with these improvements. There are no heat runs in the basement but it is just as warm as the rest of the house.

In one of the pictures below you see all the crap back on the shelving unit. I made the base for two shelves but reused the plywood from the old shelves. I needed to stop the project and needed a place to put all that crap. I will be finishing that shelving area with plywood shelves, a wood panel against the insulation and stud wall at the back and to make the shelves look thicker, false fronts for each shelf.

Broken Joist

While doing all the wiring I've done the past few days, I discovered a broken, cracked joist. The wood inside the crack looks new so it probably happened last New Years! At our New Years Eve party last year, we had quite a few people jumping and dancing right over that joist.

To fix it I first filled the crack with a flooring adhesive. Then I took a 2 x 6 smeared with the same adhesive and straddled the crack with the 2 x 6. I put the same board on the other side of the joist. I would have like to put a 2 x 6 the length of that board all the way from the foundation to the main support beam. There was too much venting in the way to do that.

New electric and lights for the basement

Holy cow! I untangled an absolute mess in the basement, something that has bothered me for years. The previous owner buried so much electric behind walls and in the ceiling. In some places, the wires actually started fires. In other places, the guy put wires together with duct tape! Open splices just pushed towards the ceiling in the basement.

Before Christmas I started by removing the wires, rerunning new wires and making connections inside new electric boxes (see the picture). On the morning of Christmas Eve I thought I would spend a few minutes laying out the new can lights. After I got them up, I wanted to hook them up. Five hours later I had to stop to get to a holiday party. The entire upstairs was without power, for two days!

Today, I was able to do a few things. I used about four hours to run two lines directly to the panel. I hooked up all the can lights to their own circuit. There will be quite a few of them in the basement hooked together so I wanted to dedicate a line just for that. Removing the lights from the circuit that the refrigerator was also a goal I had. Every light in the basement was hooked to the same line that feed the refrigerator. The second circuit I added took the entire upstairs off that same refrigerator/basement circuit. Now the upstairs to the old part of the house has their own 20 amp breaker.

Figured I saved just a boat load of money doing this work myself. I priced out this job to the electrician who wired our new service panel in the addition portion--$3000. I spent around a hundred, mostly on wire that would have been cheaper if China wasn't demanding so much.

Another basement wall ready for insulation!

This weekend I really wanted to button up the wall in the basement- block out the cold before the real winter hits is. The cold air just pouring into the basement all these years is just insane.

The bulk of the work was clearing the debris from the demolition. About thirty trips got it outside. Jackson really helped me get this part done. We then scrapped and vacuumed the old paint from the wall. About an hour to Dryloc the wall. Another hour for the foam board. The fun part was putting up the framing for the new wall. Pressure treated boards as sill plates that I drove into the concrete with an actuated gun and nails with washers. So much easier than tap screws!

The next steps. I'm going to run tubing and connect into the central vac system I installed in the rest of the house. I will also run electric through this wall for some outlets. Insulation will be done this winter, soon, and drywall in the spring.

The pictures below show the new wall. Another shows a board I pulled out from the old framing. An actual burned board! The electric in this old house is another replacement I have planned for this winter. The previous owners just spliced wires together behind walls. The last picture shows the small wall I insulated a few weeks ago. I drywalled it so it was't that much of an eye sore during the holidays.

Brick up an old window opening

For whatever reason, the family who lived in our house covered a old window opening with spray foam and plywood. I discovered this mess a few weeks ago while removing the insulation and drywall from the poorly finished basement walls. Cold air from under our porch has been pouring into our house.

To be honest, I also discovered why the previous owner didn't use cement block to close this opening. With most of the work behind the gas meter, the lack of space made it really difficult to maneuver the concrete bricks. At one point I didn't stagger the joints just so I could block more of the opening behind the meter. I'm no mason at all. Cold air pouring in your house is all I wanted to stop.

The pics below show the before and after.

Insulated Wall In The Basement

Did some work on the basement walls on my day off today. Over the last few weeks I discovered the previous owners created their "finished" basement with the wrong techniques for finishing the walls. They buried electric, insulated the walls incorrectly, nailed wood into the foundation walls which put massive holes and finally, a water line. A hot water line was run behind the insulation against the cold foundation wall. This has created condensation and a small amount of mold (smelled nasty).

I have taken everything off the walls (drywall, insulation and one by twos). I then used Drylok to seal the wall for water. Today I removed the water line by installing a Shark valve. This allowed me to shut off the water flow I that direction and the option to add a Pecs water line later.

Next Ryan and I used foam board adhesive to glue foam board on the walls. The foam board has a R value of 4 which is nothing but it will give the wall some moisture protection.

The last thing we did was install metal 2 x 4s. I used an actuated gun to shoot nails and secure the metal to the basement concrete. I've never done this and was very nervous to use the tool. It worked out ok meaning I didn't get my hand or other body parts shot.

New window installed

Last month I discovered one of the small windows in our old living room has actually been open for the last 15 years! The previous owner just caulked and painted over the ajar window.

I ordered two replacement windows from Home Depot. They took two weeks to come in and the one of them was broken (a rush job to replace should get me the window by next Friday). The windows I ordered have the same detail as the ones from 1919 except they will open. I briefly thought about weather stripping the old ones and working them over so we could open and close them. Single pane, blown glass doesn't keep the cold out. The windows are on the south side of the house so the old ones didn't keep the heat out. The new ones are double pane, with some kind of special gas in between with insulating properties. They are slightly tinted which will also help out.

The install took me an hour and a half. I didn't get to paint the opening but with the nice weather I was able to caulk the window in place.

I made my own sill trim as the pitch of the sill was just too much for the plastic sill corrector supplied by the window manufacturer.

One shows the window opening as I removed the stops and scraped the paint and gunk away.

The second shows the new window on the left. The window lites are not exactly the same but close enough.