Our Basement Renovation Story - Breaking Ground

I am so glad you have stuck around to see our progress on the basement renovation! If you missed the first two posts in this series, you can read them HERE and HERE.  Once we cleaned out the basement area where we were renovating and made significant progress with the demolition, it was time to mark out where the new rooms would be.  We used painters tape on the concrete floor to mark where the new walls would be built and where the fixtures would be placed, along with the openings for the doors.  We wanted to make sure we had all of our plans in order before we started building.

New Laundry room and Bathroom layout

Our next step was to contact a plumber to find out about installing the new plumbing and sump pump.  We have a friend who runs a plumbing business, so we called him for a quote.  The plan was to remove the concrete and install the underground plumbing, including the sump pump, install the rough in drains and water lines, and set the fixtures.  We are comfortable doing plumbing to some extent, but renting machinery to dig up our foundation was not something I was comfortable tackling. Even though it took up more than half of our budget, I am glad we chose to leave this job, as well as, dealing with permits and inspections up to the experts.

Cutting up the basement floor

Before the plumbers started cutting up our floor, we hung plastic sheeting up around the basement area using duct tape, to try to keep the concrete dust contained as much as possible.  It was a huge project to install the underground plumbing.  It took our plumber and his crew the better part of two days of cutting, smashing, and digging to get the floor ready to run the pipes.  It was loud and messy (dust was EVERYWHERE!), but exciting at the same time, because our plans were coming to life!

Running the underground plumbing

After seeing the plumber and his team spend about 8 hours cutting and digging and loading all of the chunks of concrete and dirt into pick up trucks to take away, I am so glad I spent the money to let the professionals handle it.  It was interesting watching the progress from cutting the concrete, and digging the trenches, to laying the pipe.  How they got everything in the correct place using our tape layout amazes me!

Installing the sump pump

After the underground plumbing was installed and inspected, they poured concrete over the cut out areas.  Once the concrete sets, we can start building walls (Whoo Hoo!!)

Would you try to do this yourself?