The Basement Adventure Begins
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about our main floor up to this point because the reality is, that’s where we focused our attention first. This house is unique in that you can really live on the main floor and never need to go up or down any stairs – this floor plan seems like it would be really great for someone older or handicapped. For this reason we really wanted to get the first floor in a good spot before we started work downstairs. There is, however, an element of timing that you have to consider when you are doing as much work as we are. In our case, we wanted to get our demolition done while we had a dumpster in our driveway.
Let’s back up for just a second and talk about our plans for the basement before we talk about tearing things up.
Our Plan
When we bought the house, the basement looked like this- definitely not a scary basement by any means, but also not what we were hoping for to entertain friends and family. Before we even bought the house, we did some brainstorming of what we could do to make it ours.
First, we wanted the carpet to go. I think carpet is a love hate thing for people— for me, I’d prefer a hard floor with rugs, but to each his own! In basements, it’s important to consider water – of course you don’t want to have water, but if you account for it then Murphy’s law says it won’t happen, right? We wanted to keep the flooring through the house pretty consistent, so we decided we would try to get as close as possible to the one we used upstairs.
Next, we really were not feelin’ the ceilings… they looked pretty dated and there were so many different ceiling heights. We decided if we hired someone to replace the ceilings, we could at least get a nice clean drywall plane and we could try to make it look slightly less choppy. We were hoping we could keep the main living room ceiling as high as possible (with the exception of a couple beams) and then we would bring the ceiling down in a couple areas. Although we’d be losing some ceiling heights in these areas to cut out some of the choppiness, we would be making it look more intentional.
Finally, this downstairs kitchenette was definitely on the chopping block. We knew this really wouldn’t get a lot of use and we felt like it had run it’s course (I’m wondering if this downstairs was an entirely separate apartment back in the day?). Even though we would get rid of this whole cabinetry piece we WOULD keep the plumbing – since this is directly adjacent to a bathroom, it’s the perfect setup to add a shower to the half bath in the basement. This is not an immediate need, so our plan is to make sure the plumbing is there when we need it, but we will wait a couple years to actually add this feature.
Finally, just like we did upstairs, we wanted a fresh coat of paint in the entire space– it’s amazing the difference that can make.
Starting the Work
With our grand plans in mind, we started by demolishing as much as we could while the dumpster was still in the driveway. Unlike most renovation projects, we actually had several things work in our favor in the basement (I know, I know – I’m sure something will come our way, but we should celebrate when things go well, right?)
Before our dumpster arrived, we had a contractor come take a look at the ceiling job to help us understand pricing. After searching through Thumbtack, I met Alex one morning at our house, explaining what I was hoping he could help us with. As Alex and I were walking through, I expressed our hope that the ceiling could be as high as possible. We knew it was a basement and there was only so much we could do, but every inch counted for us even if only in the main space. He took a ceiling tile out and looked above the ceiling then gave us great news. The beams in the room (the lowest point in the ceiling) weren’t structural! This would give us an extra 9 inches to the ceiling height– we were ecstatic.
As we continued to walk through, he asked if they would be responsible for the demo or if we would. I paused, then said, “Probably you– I’d be too scared to mess something up.” Apparently, after spending only a few minutes with me, Alex could tell that Matt and I were really excited to get our hands dirty on our first house, so he replied, “I’m happy to do the demo work, but there is nothing to mess up here– you could totally handle it and save some money by doing it yourself.” That evening at dinner, Matt and I decided we would take it on.
The next week when the dumpster arrived, we were largely focused on the door project (if you missed that post, check it out here). However, there were times when 4 people in our bathroom proved to be too many so we would head downstairs and use that time to get some demolition done. First, we would tackle the ceiling, something that for me would take a ladder, but for Matt, could be done from the ground. Another great surprise, it was SO easy to remove this ceiling and I was so grateful that Alex had suggested it. We learned that it was really just ceiling tiles with some sort of coating on top that hid the seams and made it look like a continuous piece. Making a hole with a hammer, we could then simply use a gloved hand to pull down the piece, usually pulling down quite a few tiles with it. One note, we did wear masks when we did this work to avoid inhaling the dust coming down with the ceiling.
Once we got these pieces down, next were the beams and MAN were we excited to see the difference these would make. This was much tougher, so we used a sledge hammer and a lot of aggression to get them down. Finally, we were ready to move on to the carpet. This process looked exactly the same as it did upstairs except at a larger scale (click here if you missed that post). Not much more to say about these steps, except LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE!!!
In the evenings after work that following week, we repeated these steps in the basement bedrooms. Now, we were ready to tackle the next part — coming next week!
