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.