White House Renovations 2014—We have a foundation!

Last week {April 9th} the house was demolished and the foundation was dug out; despite the weather not being overly agreeable they managed to get the footings poured, the walls done and the basement finished! There is still some work that needs to be done before we can start building {perimeter drains and replacing the cast iron sewer lines for starters}.

Obviously this isn’t going to be an overly exciting post, but there is progress!

One of the things with old houses is that there are ALWAYS surprises, our house is no different. Given that the original house has a full basement, that is entirely laid stone, but very short, we knew we might have some issues to deal with. While the inside of our basement wall are smooth and give a relatively “flat” surface, the outside is another story.

Enter the large stones that can’t be touched. See’em all there, poking out!

So what do you do with that?

You have to create a bump out and up in your basement to accommodate the existing foundation. I have no idea what the finished height of this is going to be. I’m hoping it will be high enough for a shelf or low enough for a bench, but we’ll see.

Forms are up for the walls.
And the walls were poured {it was starting to get dark when I got this shot}. Bottom right you can see one of the basement windows…they’re nothing fancy, just your standard basement windows.
You can see the bump up/out in this one. If/when we ever finish the basement the half or 3/4 bath will be on that far right corner, closest to the existing house. The bottom right corner is where the stairs will go from the kitchen to the basement.
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I stopped by on Wednesday to see how things were going, and there was an issue. We had talked about where the door to the basement was going to go. I wanted it on the far side {right side in the above picture}, Matt didn’t. My reasoning was that that part of the yard is already a dead spot {traffic wise} and I didn’t want it where the swing set was. We had agreed to put it as close to the fence as possible on the left side, but I guess that didn’t get conveyed to the people that it needed to be conveyed to.

The door and the huge metal bilco door way is in the middle of the left side, right in front of where you walk into the yard. Gah!! I was up half the night on Wednesday thinking this over and trying to convince myself it’s not an issue, but it is…it’s a HUGE issue. And unless we want to spend another chunk of change it’s going to stay an issue. Matt and I looked at it, and hopefully it isn’t as bad as I envision. I’m not happy, but we’ll manage.


The good news is the aforementioned bump out, is going to be a good height for a shelf. So the TV will eventually go on that wall, with lots of room to store things on it. The bad news is the basement isn’t going to be big enough to have a 3/4 bath…we’re going to try and work in a powder room under the stairs.

The boys got to be the first of their siblings in the new basement. I took them down Thursday evening to help Daddy and PopPaul put down the pex piping for the radiant heating.
They were more excited though to be playing in their own yard….
And climbing on Daddy while he worked {James}.
So, here it is…the basement.


Friday morning {today} they are pouring the floor, installing the door, and then moving our swing set someplace {I’m not sure yet where} re-grading the yard, and they should be done. The floor trusses arrived Thursday afternoon, and next week, we start building up. Now is the fun stuff, because now is the stuff that I can help with!

And yes, my boys were beyond excited about the “Mater” in the backyard {I tried explaining it was an excavator}. Henry especially loves Cars {Disney movie} and Mater, and tractors and anything else that’s a machine and moves.