This Is This Week

This week, I wanted to share some recent progress made on our basement renovation.

For some context, when we purchased our ranch at the beginning of 2022, we bought the house with the intention of gutting the basement and turning it into an in-law suite and playroom space.

The basement had an interesting layout, a very 70’s style bar, and paneling everywhere. It was poorly insulated and poorly configured for our plans.

So we pretty much ripped out everything:

Well, we continued to do minor projects in the basement over the summer, but we spent much of our time outside on garden projects and yardwork.

With the cooler weather of fall returning, however, we buckled down on our basement again and commenced work on three egress windows.

The New Windows

The basement already had three typical basement windows (see image below), but we want the basement to feel open and airy once it is fully renovated.

A. believed that having full-size egress windows was not only important for code requirements but would also accomplish this objective – providing light and fresh air throughout the space.

We decided to convert two of the existing windows and add a third one to a corner of the basement that had no windows at all.

To accomplish this, A. researched concrete saws and ultimately settled on renting a cut-and-break saw from a local equipment rental store.

Essentially, the saw has two blades and allows you to get a very clean cut. The two blades cut two lines about a half inch apart, leaving a thin strip of concrete that can be chipped off using a pry bar.

It may sound easy, but it was very labor intensive. We ultimately completed the project over three days, averaging one window per day.

A. and his dad did most of the heavy lifting, cutting the concrete in sections.

The work was very messy. Wet masonry sludge ended up all over each of us, on the floor, and on all the equipment.

I helped where I could, vacuuming up excess water, clearing debris, and keeping everyone fed and hydrated.

Once the sections were cut, the guys removed the shims that they had placed to hold everything together while they worked and we pull the blocks out in pieces.

The best part was on the last window, when we were worried about the pillars of concrete falling in on us (instead of out into the holes that we had dug for the window wells. We had pry bars and were being extra careful to manipulate the concrete blocks carefully.

And then we discovered this…

Even after we knocked out the bottom portion of the center block of concrete, the upper piece remained dangling in place – held by one masonry nail!

Better yet? It happened twice!

We all got a good laugh out of that one!

Of course we may have just been delirious from the many hours of labor.

They boarded the openings up temporarily using sheets of plywood and returned to install the windows themselves the following weekend.

The end result? Totally worth it.

Have you ever undertaken a major renovation project? Tell us about it! We’d love to read your comments.