So it's April 1st and we've gotten serious about this home renovation.

Joel and I just spent two entire weekends digging out our basement. We're adjusting the height of our previously finished basement from 6'2" to about 7'6". Although I had no complaints about the height, Joel was hitting his head on a few of the beams and exposed pipes.

Initially, this part of the house wasn't going to be touched until the end because under our previous plans, it was only going to be advanced if we had money left over. But then, it became a critical part of the new plan. Joel spent a couple of weeks tearing down our basement walls and once we had everything exposed, it was quite a large space.

When we moved in, there was basically one room with a kitchen sink, a hookup for laundry, a utility room and another larger room that appeared to have been used as a classroom/t.v./study room. Our new plans include putting two bedrooms, one full bath, a laundry room and again, pending funds, potentially a wine cellar downstairs in the basement.

We're in crunch time as Joel and I are going to be traveling back to Portland on the 11th and we wanted to have concrete poured by the time we left so it could cure while we were away.

On Saturday, Joel spent the day digging and pulling out as much dirt has he possibly could with a wheelbarrow. I can't say I was much help as I took a 4 hour nap in the middle of the day!

After three long trips up the backyard ramp with the wheelbarrow, Joel realized how useful a bobcat would be in this effort, so we rented a bobcat again for the weekend.

The hardest part about driving that bobcat is the spacing. Apparently, Joel had checked into the width of that model bobcat. When we went to pick it up and test it through the doorway we cut out of our foundation, it was about 6 inches wider than the manual stated. We learned later, that the wheels on this machine were wider (read: better) than the original. However, it still made it quite hairy to get in and out of our basement. It was within centimeters that we entered and exited the doorway.

On Sunday, realizing that we weren't as far as we needed, Joel hired some daylaborers and we went to work. They spent the entire morning digging out the basement and leveling it, which prepared it for the gravel later. I helped dig, but mostly I operated the bobcat, pulling the dirt out of the basement and pouring it outside in our backyard. We made some significant progress in leveling out the floor, digging out a drainage system and putting about 5 inches of gravel on top of that.

We got really lucky as the dirt on the north side of the house was really dry (protected by the porch), so it was easy to dig up and move while the dirt on the south part of the house was pretty moist and was like pulling out clay. Those guys worked really hard all day long.


The South side of the basement.

The North side of the basement.
So when it came time to move gravel, Joel's idea to send the gravel through the front windows of the basement didn't pan out, so we pulled a few of my flower pots from underneath the porch and filled them up. Then our neighbor came by and helped us fill pots with gravel for about an hour. By the time the first raindrops came, we had pretty much finished. Another set of neighbors stopped by to see our work and they were certainly impressed!

Here's a picture of my happy general contractor! ---->

The guys got paid and we spent about 45 minutes talking with our neighbors before returning home to rest. After such a long day of work, I wanted to shower. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of our renovation excitement.

Before I could hop into the shower, Joel found out that we had torn out two sets of pipes that we thought were useless. Instead, we had torn out the pipes to the sewer! ACK! I immediately turned off the water and we went to Lowes!

Joel's downstairs now diligently working reconnecting the sewer line. Funny thing is, at the end of the day, Joel had mentioned that he wanted to work on some plumping this evening, to get things prepared for the concrete pour next week. Unfortuantely, he meant a different plumbing project, not this one.