Building the base for the shower p-trap

bathroom behind the scenes

Insulation bedroom outside wall (inside utility room)

moving more air ducts between joists for more headspace

bringing power to the gym

Day 9: adding the new waste water Y-connector from the bathroom to the main pipe

Day 9: Bathroom Insulation around the plumbing

Day 9: Bathroom power

Day 10: Building boxes for the waste pipe in the bathroom

Day 10: closing the bathroom walls

Day 10: Bedroom: Building a box around the ductwork

Day 10: Drywall ceiling around the corner window

Day 5: new walls for the bathroom

Day5: new walls for the utility room

I’ve clumped the recent days together. A holiday and a family visit took the concentration off the basement for a couple of days.

New purchases: Maax Yarrow shower kit $400 (just polystyrene, not acrylic because of the price difference), Watergenie mascerating toilet, pump and tank ($1000), Diplex bathroom heater ($200).

new walls going up in the future play room - Ah the basement is nice and cool in the summer!

Day 6: adding sound insulation to the bedroom / bandroom walls

Day 6: adding new ductwork to bring some heat into the bedroom

Day 7: Adding drywall on top of sound insulation in the bedroom.

Day 7: Adding some plumbing in the bathroom

Day 7: where the new shower will be.

Today we added water connections for the new bathroom, the framing for the bedroom and some insulation for an outside wall that had been left uninsulated since an oil tank had been removed some time ago.

new frame for the coming bedroom

new water connections

Some new frames are built for the coming bathroom and guest room in our basement. It’s getting exciting! What made it even more exciting is that we had our first power outage last night. From about 7pm to midnight we had no lights and no water (well pump). I guess it’s time for a generator. I’ve been scouring through Home Depot, Rona and online reviews quite a bit of the day. We’ll have an emergency panel added to our electrical panel to connect the generator to. In case of a power-outage we’ll have our microwave and some smaller kitchen appliances, a light on every floor and the water pump and sump pumps working. Hey, maybe even a bit of television and radio (and the cable modem of course). Hmh, what generator to purchase?

new frame for the coming bathroom

How framing is done these days..

wall for new gym / band room

Removed wall along floor in the new storage/utility room

The first day was not very exciting but it was immediately clear that this was going to take some time. One basement wall was removed  and the new wall positions were discussed and drawn on the floor. We also took some action with regards to our well water source. There is too much sulphur in the water and this created a rotten-egg smell everytime one turned on the tap. Not very appealing when brushing your teeth! So we had the local Pump & Well guys come in to install a chemical free iron filter. This little rocket (Duro Duroclean IF) now stands next to the well pump and does its job perfectly. The smell went away immediately.

Day 2:

A crack in the foundation wall was filled up to make sure we wouldn’t have any water problems after the wall gets covered with insulation and drywall. Some of the forced-air ducts were sitting too low in the basement (at six feet tall I had to duck to cross the room). There wasn’t any good reason for the ducts not to run between the joists however, so we had them moved up. For there to be enough room for the new basement bathroom, we also had the hot water heater moved a bit to the right.

DuroClean chem-free Iron filter to remove foul odours from well water

Fixing a crack in the foundation wall: epoxy

Ducts moved between joists to create more headroom in the basement

Move hot water tank and realign connecting pipes