Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Moving right along...

On to the basement!

My cousin-in-law, a carpenter, came by this past weekend to talk family room renovation. Our deadline is Feb. 28, which is my son's first birthday party. We want to invite folks over, and thus need a ceiling and walls drywalled, sanded, painted. So, we need to finish demo (which my brothers helped tremendously to make a huge dent in on Sunday), bleach up the walls to clean them (tiny bit of mold splotches here and there), and then, most importantly, get a drainage system/sump installed.

We had some seepage in the super-fast thaw and rainstorm last month. So, we'll need to get some cracks patched too. And this spring, I'll have to solidify and rework a few of the downspouts, no doubt.

So Thursday, I've got two companies coming out to give me estimates. The third one I called, unfortunately, can't even visit for an estimate until Feb. 4, which simply wouldn't give enough time, I don't think, to get all the electrical, framing, drywalling and such done. So, I'm hoping this won't be a brutal, terrible cost. Until this seepage started happening last year, I was willing to roll the dice (stupidly) and not get this system installed, so, in a sense, this is an unexpected expense.

On the flip side, a drain tile setup will allow us to install a floating engineered hardwood floor as originally hoped, rather than a stone tile floor. I would be OK with either, honestly, but I like the wood floor look (sound and feel) better.

I'm also curious to see what they say when I tell them that the back half of the basement is finished, and as such, inaccessible for a drain tile installation...don't know if they can do it in one room only, or if it's ineffective or what. But I guess I'll see soon enough...

I'm also also also very curious to see what the electrician says when he sees our mess of an electrical box. That could cause an unforeseen expense too, if he says, "Holy crap...I'm going to have to just redo this whole box." He's a friend of the family too, so I can trust he won't just be saying that to make money off me. :)

And hopefully, things will go OK otherwise. Hopefully!

2 comments:

Joanne said...

Based on what our estimators said, you may not need the drain system on all four sides. We do for my mom's house, however, because the water is coming in on all sides.

Good luck with your basement!

Anonymous said...

We debated with ourselves on engineered woods vs. stone tiles. We eventually settled on the stone and decided to install the radiant (still an ongoing project). On the mold front, I just noticed it looks like we have a little bit growing near the intersection of our drywall and shower which is certainly a concern to me... We're planning to redo the b-room but not for another 2 years or so.

Sounds like you've got a fair amount of cost risk in the upcoming projects... hopefully you don't end up with a full replacement of the electrical box or some other check-book bomb like that.