The Warmth of a fireplace

Well we thought maybe since a few people had heard about our progress over the last weekend, we may as well post it up so the rest of the world can see it.

The big goal of our MLK weekend was to get our back-splash done. Originally, it was going to be and my wife doing the blunt of the work and struggling our way through it. Thankfully a sister once again volunteered her talents and was able to help on the back splash, and it looks pretty good if you ask me. (And it allowed me to work on projects I saw of higher importance)

It is your run of the mill earth tone square mosaic tile you can buy in sheets. But then we decided that would be too boring so we bought some accent tiles; expensive little buggers, and put those in to add just a little more depth to things.

Oh and just a side note, when you buy thin-set, double check if it is quick setting or not... kind of makes a big deal of things if you have to hurry.

So while those two were busy with the tile me and my sisters "Special Friend" worked on finishing the data wiring through the house. he did a great job and it looks really good and clean. If anyone needs this done I highly recommend that you call him to come and do it. So now we have hard line internet and Coax running to almost every room in the house.

I plan on building a cabinet door and surround to go around it and make it "outta sight outta mind" but still very accessible for people if something needed change in the future. I am also going to just make a piece of plywood that can cover the exposed wire around the panel box and be painted to match the walls.  This will clean up the messy look of the Main breaker box and the central data location.

Now for the big one, long story short; we have been watching our Craigslist for a fireplace over the last 3 months. Mainly because both our patio and basement are reasonably cold places and we wanted something that would match the decor and still be nice. Once we started looking into it. We were not able to do anything in the basement, for venting reasons and our chimney now used for the furnace vent. as for the patio, we would have to do quite the overhaul of a wall so that idea was kind of out.

We were at Menards the other day, and they had on sale an electric fireplace insert. It is made to be put in a place where you had a fireplace but have no interest in making a real fire. So we got it and brought it home, but we had no mantle to place it in or anything. We did have a lot of scrap wood, and an air nailer lying around :) We then spent a part of the night looking at fireplaces on the internet and taking design cues we liked from them.

I spent the next day grabbing all of the leftover 1 x 8's and 12's and cutting them to what I needed to make a base, Uprights and filler boards. I had leftover Crown from the kitchen and baseboard from the wall we took out and left over 2x3's for the framing from the basement studs. We did go and buy 3 pieces of 1/2" round... to finish the look, but for the most part that was all. I had to cut a large piece of plywood we had from the cabinets upstairs for the top of the mantle...we have yet to paint it, but looks pretty good. My wife liked it so much; it is apparently going to stay upstairs in use until the basement is finished.

The best part about it is it weighs less than 80 lbs, so when it is wanted in one room... it can go there. We do plan on putting some paint on it or something, we are just not sure as to what color we are going for. But we are always open to suggestions !

Basement continued

Again, fallen off of the bandwagon, I remember in the days of old (last

Sept/Oct) this thing was getting updated all of the time. Now we are just trying

 to keep up with our changes.

So where was I, Oh yeah; So once I have gotten all of the studs up and in place

with the help of a friend, I was able to get ready to move on to other things.

But before I could go too far, I had to get a fire-blocker up in place on the

stud walls. Basically a fire-blocker is just what it sounds like. As you stud a

basement wall, you see that there is some space b/t the stud wall and the block

wall due to the need to have a square wall.  That space can be dangerous in the

event of a fire. allowing a chute for fire to follow from the basement to your

upstairs.

The way that we prevent that is by installing small blocks of wood that cover

the cavity b/t the two walls. eliminating the strong updraft that can be created

by a fire. In some states it is code in others not. But I had some extra

trim board I pulled off of the wall that worked perfect for the job.

Wiring/Speakers

I was then able to get my wires run through the walls, sorry for the few

pictures, but i was just in a groove.  The important thing to remember are that  you want to keep the outlets in the basement a min of 12" off the floor, and that you also NEVER run electrical within 6-8 inches of either audio or data(cat-5 or Coax) because this will cause disruption in the signal.

I actually went ahead and ran the speaker wire close to the ceiling and the Cat-5 about 10 inches above my 12-2 wire but the only impossible place was when I had to pass under the panel box. (well you can't win them all) Also took the time to get the wires for the outlets run, and I plan on a majority of the basement outlets being on 1 circuit, just to keep things simple.

After I was able to get all of the wires run, I could then begin to do my least

favorite project... my dads is plumbing, mine is insulating. Nothing worse than

being covered in fiberglass insulation and having your entire body itch from

the small fibers.

Anyway, we decided that it would be worth it to insulate the basement to keep

that extra bit of warm and actually kill the sound echo a little bit. Nothing

fancy but what is necessary to have those creature comforts. As for what

insulation to use it is primarily up to the person and what you are insulating.

What is most important on insulation is the R value, it is on all bags of it,

displaying its R-Value (basically how many hours it takes to change the temp of

one side to the same temp of the other)

More explained:

http://www.ehow.com/about_6544360_insulation-values-explained.html

Then up went the Vapor barrier, it has some R-value to it, but not really. All

the vapor barrier is for is to keep moisture from condensing on the backside

of the sheet-rock. Also as for thickness of the plastic, its really at your

digression, I used 4 mil, but you can go anywhere from 2-10 mil then just

staple it up with a nailer or whatever will stick it to the studs long enough

to hold it until the sheet rock goes up!

\\

Last but not least, to really change the overall look of the basement, we get to put the Sheetrock up. It really went pretty smooth overall, other than i decided to put it up by my lonesome. Not very recommended, it is just useful to have that extra set of hands around to be able to help out with moving and cutting of the sheet-rock. I used some mold-resistant Sheetrock it is nearly the same price as a regular sheet, usually green or purple. Reasonable cost for piece of mind.

Our ceilings in the basement are fairly low, which you will get with an old house. So I had to cut about 12-14 inches off of every sheet... that always stinks when you have to take that much off. Also I made sure to leave at least 1/2"-3/4" inch above the floor of the concrete just to keep any moisture from getting on the rock.

And Over the weekend, we got our back-splash up, and a small "impulse" buy and good use of our scrap wood, you will just have to wait and see......

Basements 102 (Framing)

Now onto the more difficult of the tasks for the home DIY'er, Framing. This isn't for the faint of heart, and somthing that I would receomend finding a friend to help you out with.

Framing is the boards that go one the wall behind the sheetrock and what holds the wires, insualtion and house all together.  In the basement there are options to how much of an extent you want to go with it. When it comes to size of the studs and spacing there options.


For the studs (verticals) You can use a 2x2, 2x3, or 2x4;  if you choose to use a 2x2, you can secure them straight to the wall, with anchors, obviously anchors that go below the surface of the wood allowing you to secure the Sheetrock without interference. This method would also allow you to do without a sill (board running across the top or bottom) but not very well recommended. Otherwise you can create a standard 2x3 or 2x4 wall and secure them in place. As for the sill; in a basement it is always a good idea to use pressure treated wood for the sill that is on the floor. Pressure treated wood is water and mold resistant, not proof, just resistant. The bottom board is the one that is pressure treated see the difference?

On the spacing... there are two options 16" and 24" optimally, This means the space from edge to edge is 16"s or 24".  Really there is little advantage to doing a 24" spacing on studs; usually 24" is saved for garages and basements and that's it. It is less load bearing but the advantage is that if you have a very very large basement it will save you a couple of bucks. But when you think about it a 30 x10 room would require 65 studs on 16" spacing and 43 when on 24". So it does make a bit of a difference if cost is a big thing. The only big disadvantage is that if you 24" spacing, that means there is an extra 8" between studs and therefore the Sheetrock over it will be more likely to crack when force is put on it. So if you have small children or plan on them...  with there rough and tumble and pushing one another into the wall; 16" spacing may be worth the extra 40 dollars in studs.

I ended up using 2x3 for the reasons that they were a hair cheaper than 2x4's, give me an extra inch or two on the room and it is just enough to be able to fit a normal sized electrical box in the wall.

While or before getting in too deep with framing up, you need to have a layout. If it comes down to a big square room, then there is not much to do. If you have a dividing wall however,  you will need to lay it out before you put it up.  I used string and a sharpie to start with the layout of the dividing wall since you can't guarantee that any of the basement walls are level you have to do your best to get your wall straight and true.

If you are short a level, and all all you have is a pen and a tape measure... that's all you need. Measure on 1 board 3 feet and mark it then measure the other way at 90º and mark 4 feet. Once those are done, the distance in between should be 5 feet. if not. Adjust which ever wall is still movable and that will put it in square... this works vertically and horizontally.

I had to use this method to set up our closet that was to go into the office/ bedroom. This wall was to be dividing up the big room so we have a smaller room on one end. The only bad thing that made it difficult was that I had to work around a water shut off valve. My personal preference is that I can be able to turn a wrench on the pipe in the wall; nothing is more frustrating then a homeowner building something around an important pipe or wire that now has no access. So our closest is a little extra deep, but worth it if I ever need to be taking the water pipe apart.

That concludes Basements 102... but there is more to come (when I get more photos) and we can go over FireBlockers and Egress windows and touch on insulation.

Finishing basments 101

Hope everyone out there had a wonderful Christmas and New Years! Me and my wife got to spend time with family and friends and away from the chaos of the house remodel that is constantly a temptation to work on :).

After all of the business of the holidays we had a chance to work on the house some. My place of work was shut down over the span between Christmas and New-Years, so I had the most opportunity to work on the house. the last time you were updated, we were doing the tidbits of final touches upstairs. Since then we have jumped to the basement; there are a few big projects awaiting us (cutting 25' of sewer line from out of the floor) but we decided that we want to at least make some livable space in the basement.

You need to know some things before you begin to finish a basement because they will effect how it is done.

What kind of walls do you have?

What you are wanting to use it for?

How often you will be down there?

Do you want it to be warm or not?

Does your basement tend to flood?

We are planning on using our basement for entertainment and for a place to be away from upstairs and part of that room we want to convert into a small bedroom/ or office.

First before anything, you want to seal your walls, really almost regardless of if you have had water in your basement in the past or not this will prevent water from at least coming through the walls. There are many options out there for sealers but you should know your needs and not just buy one.

The brand that we ended up getting was called Watertite; we also looked at drylock, but the warranty on it was the difference b/t 10 years and lifetime. Another thing to consider is the amount of water that can be  and needs to be held back. the WaterTite had a rating of 34 PSI (which means that it can have 34 pounds of pressure per square inch on the wall from water and not leak) and Drylock had a rating of 10 PSI; usually car tires are filled at 30-40 PSI, so that gives you a good idea of how much force it can hold. It wasn't cheap however; close to 30 dollars a gallon, and covered an area of about 8 x 20 feet after 2-3 coats. Making sure that the grout lines (stuff in/bt blocks) were covered the best. so depending on the dampness of your basement walls will determine what you are after for sealer.

WaterTite By Rustoleum

DryLock By UGL

Here is a good article that walks you through more specifics:  Waterproof-Your-Basement

Once we had the walls sealed, we were able to start laying out stud walls and how we wanted our basement to work.