Basement Gut

As mentioned in my deck project, I had experienced some water penetration into my basement. It was severe enough to ruin the drywall in one corner and the carpets. Nothing else was damaged thankfully (new couches had been brought down the summer previous). You can see the water staining on the floor and the wall by the baseboard.

So we called in our insurance agent and they proceeded to have a demo company come tear apart the wall and assess the leak. What a surprise I was in for!

2×2’s strapped to the wall, drywall used as spacers, a non-existant vapour barrier, shoddy electrical (with sprayfoam in the outlet box and MOLD. No separation between the concrete and the wood. It was either done by someone without the know-how or by someone who didn’t care (a search at city hall revealed no previous permits. This was only the beginning of my problems to be uncovered in this renovation.

Our insurance claim was approved and we decided that with the work that we wanted to make it right and gut the level rebuilding it from scratch. That meant that there would be no hiring of contractors, but being pretty handy, I was eager to do the work myself.

Here are the other problems that I ran into:

1. The foundation wall repair. I hired a contractor to do the work and they found that the weeping tile had been crushed and plugged. They replaced that and ran a drain up to the basement window level.

2. The window needed replacing. water had gotten in around the steel frame and split the concrete and rusted it out. I hired out that fix as well and had the contractor put in a window well.

3. They had tied copper and electrical wiring together within junction points without the approved maretts or ‘No-Al-Ox’ paste. They also had multiple circuits in the breaker panel being fed by a single breaker

4. The ceiling fixture (2 single bulb flourescent fixtures hooked into series) were cut into the ceiling joists. They’re 2×8 joists, but 2” cuts in the middle are not a good thing! The circuit hot wire ran from the electrical panel to the fixture then to the switch then back through the neutral to the panel. So the fixture was ‘hot’ even with the switch turned off. Sigh

What I did:
- complete gut
- I put rigid foam insulation on the floor and walls and framed them properly ensuring that no wood touched concrete.
- Repaired the ceiling joists by laminating new joists to the old ones
- Ran new electrical and replaced breakers with slimmer models to increase the capacity of my breaker panel.
- New smoke detector tied into the lighting circuit
- Cork Flooring (click lock)

A very rewarding experience in all, but it really opened my eyes to ‘What lies beneath’. Inspections passed, I maxed out my Home Renovation Tax Credit and blew the budget to smithereens.

-- Mike - Minimum code = Barely adequate.