So Wednesday was the day! Since I don’t think I ever shared pictures of the basement and it is a total labrynth, I drew a little diagram. On an adorable post-it.
So, we thought the areas to be affected would be the bathroom (obvs), the exercise room and maybe the little area in front of the shelves. Haaaaaaaaa.
Keith texted me at some point in the morning that the project was going to be a lot more involved than they expected. Which is just a wonderful thing to hear.
I stopped at home Wednesday night to get the mail and was greeted by the sound of jack hammers and this sight:
You can hardly see, but the left truck was FULL of broken up concrete/dirt. I had originally planned to go in and take pictures, but obviously couldn’t do that with them still there. Keith stopped by a few minutes after I left and went inside He later informed me that it was wayyyy worse than expected. I decided I would sneak down Thursday morning before they got there and take pictures. So that’s what I did.
This was the view that greeted me once I opened the door. Encouraging already, right?
Once I peeled away some plastic, I was greeted by this in this office. Hello, sink and vanity! You do not belong here. Those are countertops to the left and right. 2/3 of them Keith ripped out of the exercise room and were just stashed in the little office til we could get rid of them. The other one was from the little office and the plumbers had to rip it out. I wanted it out of there anyway, so I was not the least bit disappointed by this. And Keith asked them to just throw it all away and they agreed, so that was a huge bonus since the other two had been sitting there for months (too big for either of our cars).
And then here she is. Lovely. And another angle to show the enormity of the hole.
Yikes.
The rest of the exercise room. Old nasty carpets and old toilet. It was indoor/outdoor carpet and it sucked. I hate green and it shows EVERY single dog hair. They told Keith they were going to put it back, but he told them just to throw it out. You can also see the lovely state of the walls down there. That white strip is where Keith ripped the desk out. There is some sort of burlap glued to all the walls, but of course they put it on after the desk, not before. Another old house surprise.
And then here we are looking at the bathroom. That giant rectangle leads to the tub.
A better bathroom shot. Pretty horrible. Just to the left of the blue blanket, you can see a cracked pipe.
This shot is of the little office, I am standing where the old desk was ripped out. Through that folding door is what we call “the hole” and you can see they dug all the way into there.
Closer shot of the hole. This is where the other two bathrooms connect to the main line.
And then the view once I turned around, looking back toward the office.
And a better shot of how that trench connects to the giant exercise room hole.
And then two little holes under the shelves, these must have been their initial holes before they realized which direction the problem was.
to be continued….
knockdownthesewalls
/ February 8, 2013Oh. My. God. I am going to have this done to my basement in march. I hate to say it, but i hopemine doesnt look like this! I thought it would be simple!
katrina
/ February 11, 2013apparently our plumbing was a huge mess, we had one line from the kitchen and another from the bathrooms, so they combined everything so it made more sense. i hope yours goes smoother! if you need a plumber, matt mertz plumbing was awesome. highly recommend.