Sunday, July 29, 2012

And the show begins...

Our first of our subcontractors start tomorrow on the basement. Mr. Waterproofing will be in the house breaking up concrete to install a perimeter drain. To do our part, we rearranged the entire basement so that the perimeter was unobstructed, save for the furnace.

Here's a garage full of ceiling insulation that was removed for the seismic work from earlier in the year. We'll route a few new electrical circuits before reinstalling this.

Here's the basement with all of our junk lined up in the center.



Here's a bouquet I picked of Russian sage and Echinacea that had fallen too far into our pathway through the garden.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

We finally got off our duffs...

It's been an eventful summer and we've been enjoying the nice weather and relaxing our weekends away. In the meantime, our basement project has been languishing. But, we got a handful of proposals to fix our water problem in our basement and we are starting to think beyond the day that the perimeter drain is installed.

Over the past few weeks, I've been playing with the floor plan and thinking about how we might like to use the new space. One thing that was giving me trouble was a window in the closet that we've recently split into two closets. Who wants a window in a closet? Not me! This weekend we opted to close it up and I have to say that it looks about 100 times better on the outside of our house now. Before, we had a pair windows that were different dimensions so their appearance was lopsided.

Framed up...

Insulated and hemmed in with some scraps of plywood. We chose not to remove the lathe on this wall because there is blown-in insulation in the stud cavity so the plywood addition makes the plane even.


Another effort we took on was rewiring the three-way switch to give us a light at the top of the stairs to the basement. Three-way switches are tricky but I figured it out (on the second try). In my defense, the switch had some very confusing labeling on the hot and neutral terminals. I had thought I was wiring up hot to hot but the labeling got the better of me. It works now and all we need are the permanent light fixtures before we are ready for drywall in the stairwell.

An awkward angle to view the two new junction boxes wired up for control by two switches.