The Basement

After a couple years break from updating our house blog, we have a lot to share! This past January 2016, we finally started remodeling the basement, which was something we had planned to do at some point down the road when we bought the house in 2012.

To start this process, several years ago, Loren and I gathered up sledgehammers and knocked out the old makeshift walls that held the coal in the coal room that fed the initial boilers in the 1920s. We also hired out someone to rip up and replace the concrete floor. The floor was only a couple inches thick at best, was gravelly and broken, and had ground water occasionally bubbling up through it. At that point, winter air was billowing in the windows and we sealed them up with plastic until we also replaced them a few years back.

We also had a structural engineer come out a couple different times, both during our negotiations when we purchased our home and later to confirm we had no active movement in our walls. I learned much more then about lateral earth force and other related topics than I hope to ever need.

Below are photos that track the progression of our family room in the basement.

While our contractor team framed the walls, put up drywall, installed the ceiling, and coordinated electrical and plumbing work, work was far from complete when they wrapped up in April. Since then, Loren and I (with Loren taking on the major lead role) have installed the engineered hardwood floor, painted the walls, and put in trim work, among other many other things.

Our latest step, started over this Christmas vacation, is installing the brick veneer wall in the family room. We considered several types of reclaimed brick from different geographic areas and finally decided on brick from New England. The clay content and other local factors give it distinctive coloration, compared to, for example, the reclaimed brick we were also thinking about from the Baltimore area.

Twelve hundred pounds of cut brick pieces arrived a couple weeks ago and are now partially up, attached to heavy sheet metal fixtures Loren has hung on our wall.

We have been very fortunate to have so many family and friends help watch Jack while we do some things that our little helper shouldn't be helping with...we also make use of naps and bedtimes. Yesterday Jack and Brady were able to occupy themselves playing with the stud finder and watching Bob the Builder while Loren and I installed brick. We may have our own future little builder on our hands!