The Basement Part 2: Demolition

In Part 1 of the basement series, I mentioned that we were removing the existing wall between the finished and unfinished part of the basement and moving it over to create a larger main studio space with a smaller laundry room and workshop. To get an idea of the feel of the space, here are some pre-demolition photos.

In Part 1 of the basement series, I mentioned that we were removing the existing wall between the finished and unfinished part of the basement and moving it over to create a larger main studio space with a smaller laundry room and workshop. To get an idea of the feel of the space, here are some pre-demolition photos.

This wasn't working. And as you can tell from the photo, the walls and ceiling especially were terribly plastered. The lighting was insufficient as well. We have a big plan for the lighting - more on that later. Back to the demolition! Chris had his carpenter friend Doug come over to build the new wall while he and Brian did the demo work! It didn't take long for this mess to come down. Here are some photos of the process.

We got the main dividing wall down and most of the laundry room framed up, but upstairs became a priority and this project got left in the dust. A year later, the rest of the house is about 90% complete and it's now time to tackle this monster of a project. Chris took a week off work so we made a day by day schedule to help keep us on task. First we had to gut the basement. I really don't know how we acquired so many things in two years; it's unreal. After a few trips to the dump and some free-furniture-Facebook giveaways, we had room to began tearing down the drywall that was left behind.

The old walls were framed with 2x3's with no blocking (hence they were all twisted and warped) and the bottom plates were standard spruce on concrete with no sill gasket. Given these issues with the construction, we tore it right back to the original insulation, vapour barrier and all, and started fresh with the guidance of my Uncle Jeff. Chris built out two new exterior 2x4 walls so he could add some R20 insulation and re-do the vapour barrier properly.

Since we are sealing up the laundry room, we had to get a plumber in to move around a few pipes so they weren't buried exteriorly. Keeping them behind insulation on an exterior wall could lead to freezing in the winter.

The basement is feeling quite large now that all the junk is gone and we have gotten rid of the dusty rose walls. We have lots of cool plans for lighting and storage!

Thats all for now. Stay tuned for phase three! Keep up to date with our reno by following us on Twitter or Facebook.