Fully Underway with the Basement Dig Out

Well the basement work has been moving full steam ahead.

Jose (the concrete guy) put in the new footings which will be used to support the main beam line in the center of the house. The new footings are 1' thick and are 4' x 4' square.
Here in the photo you can see the new columns sitting on the footings.

Each column is exactly 8' 5". The new floor will be 4" thick giving a final ceiling height under the beam of 8' 1".

All that being said only after two weeks of work things are really moving along.

Just about all the framing is completed in the existing portion of the house.

Jose is planning to grade the basement on Monday (video to come). This means he will make everything level

Once Jose is done Vladmir, the plumber, will come in to install the few underground lines for the basement bathroom and mechanical lines. As soon as he is completand gets his inspection the radiant system will be coming in.

Tom Gory will be on-site tomorrow to complete the new water service. 1.5" copper line of crisp clean Chicago water. Ummm taste the minerals.

Iouri is working on demolishing the existing porch and we have a few additional openings to close up.

The roofer will be coming next week to demo the roof (all 6 layers---Note:code only allows 3) and replace it. We will be using a newer roofing system call TPO (will have to find out what it stands for) I am happy to have it as it is considered a "green product" being that it is non petroleum based. Up until recently most of the typical residential roofing products were all petroleum based which as BP can tell you in not what you want these days. We have a TPO roof on one of our commercial buildings and it has held up very nice over the years. It should work especially well in this application because, although the roof is flat, it still has a decent pitch, which means no drainage issues. Standing water is what shortens the life of a flat roof.

I get to drive out to Aurora on Tuesday to get the sky lights. They have to be framed out and on site while the roofers are doing there thing.

AND THE BIG NEWS.......we have decided to enlarge the back of the house by an additional 2' We decided that the kitchen was just no large enough for what we wanted. So the entire back of the house just got bigger. In the end it will make virtually no difference in cost but will be a huge difference in space. We are very excited.

So far the project has been moving very nicely. It has been great to work with Mick. He has really allowed me to use my imagination for designing the space the way we ultimately want it look.
I will upload a video in the next day or so of the framed layouts. The house is looking fantastic.

Below are several videos of Jose driving the Bob Cat and basically digging up any semblance of what was left of a back yard.




I suppose I could try and convince Steph to leave the ramp and we could have a drive in basement for my giant car collection :) Although I have a feeling she actually wants to finish the basement at some point.


It ended up being a good thing that the last column was never put up. Later that day one Jose's guys ran over it and broke it, so needless to say he gets to make a new one.