Say hello to my little friend!

Well, my back is killing me and I have a bunch of concrete I don't what to do with but at least I have a giant hole in my basement...is that supposed to be a good thing?

Adding a header

This week has seen minor progress until today.  I decided now was as good as time as any to tackle one of the more major elements of the remodel, the opening up of the stairwell and part of the rec room.  It started with a trip to Menards where I discovered that their in house engineer will actually do the load calculations on beams and headers for free...bonus.  He did the calculations and figured I needed two 8' LVL's at a depth of 7.25.  They don't actually stock that size but since their is ductwork in the basement where the header is going I decided to get the next largest size (9.75).  The actually loss of headroom is the same since the ductwork in that area protrudes down farther than the 7.25 header would have  anyways.  On to the pictures:

Here is the basement prior to the header.

What is shown here is the to temporary support walls in place prior to the demolition.

More f-bombs than "Scarface" and one step-stool thrown across the floor later, here is the finished space:

We are very happy with this and it makes a HUGE difference in how much space their appears to be down there.

The joys of home ownership...

Other possible names for this post:  Two steps forward, two steps sideways,  seriously?!?, How can I be two weeks behind when I just started two weeks ago?

Well, things have been going okay in the basement.  I got down there to do some framing  I got the rec room closet framed in.

I also got my shop framed in.

Here is where things started to suck a little.  Upon inspecting the rim joist I discovered that the current insulation was far from adequate.  It was simple fiberglass bats and there was so much air leakage that warm interior air was condensing on the inside of the rim joist and creating problems.  To fix this I cut down some foam insulation and then foam sealed it in the rim joist.  That should stop the warm air from hitting the cold rim joist.  I will then cut add fiberglass insulation to further insulate.  This isn't a budget buster (only 30$) but it is a few hours of unexpected work.

Additionally we have a frost problem in the attic.  It first came to my attention two years ago when we had water dripping through a light fixture in the bathroom.  When I searched the attic I discovered that the bathroom vent had detached from the roof vent and we were venting the bathroom directly into the attic and icing up the sheathing.  I fixed the vent and thought I solved the problem.  Inspecting the attic last night I discovered an excessive amount of frost in the attic, this time concentrated above the kitchen.  Well, a four hour fact finding mission distilled to a picture:

I discovered that the kitchen vent was never properly vented outside but merely terminated in the soffit directly below a soffit vent for the attic.  Since I was making a conscious effort run the kitchen fan more often I was expelling all the humid kitchen air directly into the soffit where it was immediately sucked into the attic.  So now I need to add extending the kitchen vent through a proper soffit vent to my to do list.

Owning a house is "awesome"

Weather had other plans this weekend.

I had big plans to spend a large portion of the weekend in the basement but the weather had other plans.  We ended up spending an extra day at J's mom's house because it was just too unsafe to drive home on Saturday. When we did come home on Sunday there was quite a mess waiting for me.  The plow has pushed up about 3.5 ft. of snow at the end of the drive way and there was a 3' drift by the front door.  After around 2 hours of shoveling my motivation to hit the basement was severely drained.

I did get downstairs though and glued up and sealed the polystyrene insulation.  That was the last step before the framing can begin in earnest.

The Mess has Begun

The remodel has officially begun.  8 hours in and I have already generated more wast than I had anticipated.  We looked into getting a dumpster but that ran around 400$ so that option was out.  We decided to get the biggest garbage can our service offers and simply throw a little away each week.  I am now thinking we will be throwing away construction garbage for the next year!

The first step was reconfiguring existing walls.  I replaced a door rough in with a wall and moved an existing wall about three feet to give our rec room some more space.  Next step is insulating and framing the outer perimeter walls.

Materials

Received the shipment of materials from Menards.  We didn't want to buy the drywall so early but it was on sale so who can argue with saving money. Menards shipped the wrong insulation, thankfully it was noticed right away so the truck could take it back.  They than ran out a second truck with the correct insulation so everything worked out in the end.

Walking it all down the stairs was not as much fun as I thought it would be.

Building Inspector

Met with the building inspector last night and everything went surprisingly well.  No expensive surprises and mostly good news.  The only issue is that I need to run an additional supply and return duct in the basement.