Stairway to Heav.....err Basement

With the weather continuing to be pretty nice, the concrete guys have started to pour the footers and walls of the basement stairs. If the weather was anything like it was at this time last year we would have never been able to do any of this.  We extended the landing at the bottom of the stairs because we will have a deck that goes over it so we need to ensure it extends past the future deck. 

Pouring Footer

New Footer

Building Walls of Basement Stairway

Pouring Concrete

New Basement Stair Walls. We'll be replacing the existing door with a new wider door.

"Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"......Well our basement has!

One of the major things we wanted to do prior to even thinking about finishing our basement was to waterproof. We consistently get water in our basement every time it rains and we knew we needed to address that before even thinking about renovating our basement later down the road. Since we were already going to be excavating for the mudroom footers, we decided to just continue with the excavation and waterproof the back side of the house now while the yard is still ruined. (Front side of the house will get waterproofed when we re-do the front porch, Phase 4).

In addition to excavating the mudroom area and the back of the house, we are also excavating the basement stairs and rebuilding them so that they will fit under the new deck. 
The weather has been pretty mild for December, so we've been able to keep moving along.

Old Exterior Basement Staircase - We are removing this and building new

Basement Stairs Removed

Excavated the side of the house

Gas lines exposed

Backside of the house excavated

Some have been asking us if we expected such a big renovation. The answer is Yes and No. We've always expected a big job, but I think this was the point that I realized this was so much bigger then I thought. BUT it should be worth it in the end. We're NEVER MOVING!!!! Unless someone gives me the right offer ; )

We're BACK IN BUSINESS....Mudroom BE GONE!!!

So after two weeks, we are back in business. We worked directly with the inspector to have the stop work order removed and this guy was the nicest guy ever!!! Yes you are reading that correctly, this inspector was extremely helpful, easy to work with, and the reason the stop work order was removed so quickly.

Now that we have all of the correct permits, we are ready to move full steam ahead. First order of business, taking down the mud room off the back of our house.  The mudroom needs to be removed because it was built directly on top of the ground, without footers, so it's sinking. The floor from the kitchen to the mudroom was super uneven because of this. Removing the mudroom will allow us to excavate for new basement stairs, waterproof the back side of the house and ultimately build a new bigger, badder mudroom. 

Before - With Mudroom

After - Without Mudroom - oh and some windows removed too :) Andddd no grass :(

Windows Arrive!!! BUT "STOP in the name of..." a stop work order??!!

So our windows have arrived after 4 weeks, and they look awesome and HUGE!  Here they are in the Cigar Room (still more to come on that later ;) )

We were pretty excited about the windows but then this happened.....

So, in case you weren't aware, the City of Chicago permit office is ridiculously slow and a pain to work with.  Lauren and I applied for permits over 2 months ago, and we'd received sign-off on all but one item. We didn't want to wait to start our renovation because that would have pushed our timeline further into the winter, so we started a little earlier without having the final sign-off.  City says a neighbor called and complained, but I don't know why a neighbor would do that when we're trying to make improvements to the property (which indirectly also helps the neighbors' property value). The inspector  was really nice about it though which rarely happens.  He knew our sign-off was just days away, but he still needed to issue the stop work order.   We're expecting the permits to come in any day now so this should only slow us down a few days.

Support: Beams and headers

Our home is a big old house and in order to ensure that it doesn't fall down when we remove walls, we needed to support the home with a lot of huge beams and headers. In the main part of the first floor we removed three main walls which would require three new beams to support the weight of the second floor and a perpendicular beam for extra support. Take a look at the old floor plan and a new floor plan to refresh your memory.

Old layout - two walls by powder room and wall by sun room will be removed

New layout - 3 walls removed

Iron Beam for the Sunroom - the span was too wide for a wood beam. Over 20 ft gap

Iron Beam Up on the Sunroom/Family Room with a 2X4 temporary wall for support while beam is secured. This is now the Great Room

Beam where powder room was and again with 2x4 temporary wall for support

Wide open - Great Room, Breakfast Room and Kitchen

Game plans are overrated

So you may remember that we had a structural engineer come out a few weeks ago who told us that we could and should raise the floor.  Well during his visit, he also mentioned that we'd have a lot more headroom going into the basement if we were to move our basement staircase.  This means that we would be swapping the pantry and the staircase with one another.  I was actually really excited about this change because now our pantry would be inside our kitchen rather than in the hallway.

This is where the old staircase to the basement was located and where are pantry will be. Notice the curving wall, which is where the upstairs 2nd staircase is coming down.

This is where our new basement staircase will go. This is under the front staircase.

Change order...the first of many!

Now that the crew has gotten most of the walls down, we are able to see what the sunroom looks like without a wall and we really like it.  We are having second thoughts about putting a half wall back up. 

Here is what we originally thought we wanted:

Sunroom / Family room with half wall

Here is what we are thinking about doing now:

New Greatroom without half wall

Subfloors Galore, Subfloors No More

So after removing the hardwoods, we were planning on keeping the subfloor in place and just patching certain areas that needed it. However after a few people started falling through the floor boards we thought it would be best to rip out all of the existing subfloors which were all rotted and install new subfloors. This would also allow for an easier installation of the new hardwood floor because gluing and screwing sheets of plywood vs 2X8 boards equals a lot less labor. 

Living Room / Parlor

2nd Bedroom on the second floor

3rd Bedroom on the second floor / Aiden's old nursery

View from first floor into Aiden's old room

Master Bedroom on Second Floor

Old Dining room / Future Cigar Room! More to come on that later :)

Fireplace shopping

Now that we know that our fireplaces are inoperable in their current state, and that we need new inserts for sure (and possibly a new chimney), we decided to go shopping for gas inserts.  We went to two fireplace stores and looked at these vintage gas fireplaces because they most closely resemble the 1890s fireplaces we have.

It seemed like a good idea except in person I hated these fireplaces.  When standing in front of them, they looked like toy fireplaces. The other part that bothered me were the fake coals or fake logs that were inside of them. The actual part of the fireplace where the flame is at is about 12" wide, so that meant the imitation logs were only about 8" wide.  Needless to say, I thought it definitely looked like a fake fireplace.

So we started thinking, since we are already tearing out the surround in order to rebuild some of the chimney, why don't we just expand the opening to fit a larger fireplace. Yes, we'd be losing the vintage feel of it, however, I think we'd get more use out of a larger fireplace like the one below. 

windows order...plus more change orders

Originally, the plan was to repair whatever windows we were able to and only purchase new windows for the locations where windows didn't already exist. Our existing windows would need to be repaired because they are original to the home, therefore, they are single pane, and in the winter they let a ton of cold air in, and rattle like crazy in the wind. We realized that it was going to cost too much money to repair our current windows to a point where they would be energy efficient, so we decided it would be best to get all brand new windows especially since all the walls were open, and it would be harder to replace later on. Additionally, if we are now opening up all of the walls and replacing all of the windows, we might as well spray foam insulate from the inside.  There goes another change order :/

We began researching a few different brands because we needed a company and window line that could make large custom windows. A few of our windows are 54 in x 81 in and not many window manufactures can make them that size. We decided to go with Pella Architect series because we thought the profile of the window resembled our current windows the best and because they could custom make our extra large windows.  

Of course the choices didn't end there. After selecting the brand and line, we needed to decide on color for the inside frame, outside frame and for the hardware. We went back and forth on various window options, but in the end we wound up deciding on Bright White interior with Classic White exterior, full sized InView screens with oil-rubbed bronze hardware.  Something like this (except the hardware is darker in person):

We learned that we have 51 windows in our house (!), but since we will only be replacing the windows on the first and second floor right now, our final count dropped down to a mere 38 for the order :)

The sooner we get the windows installed, the sooner walls can get closed up!  They take 4-6 weeks to come in, so we order at the end of October to keep us on schedule.

I got 99 Problems, and the Fireplace IS one!

We had a fireplace technician come out and take a look at our two fireplaces to let us know what was needed to make both fireplaces operable. The guy didn't have good news for us.  In fact, he had really horrible news for us.  Our fireplaces are basically fire hazards and need to be replaced.  However that wasn't the bad news since we kinda figured as much.  The bad news was that our entire chimney was in horrible shape and would need to be rebuilt from the basement to the roof.  One big problem with that is that according to code, your chimney needs to be 2 feet above the highest part of your roof. SAY WHAAAT?!?!?!. Our roof is so pitched it makes a black diamond ski slope look tame.  So of course, to rebuild a chimney of that magnitude it would cost a fortune...like one year's tuition at an out of state college fortune. 

We were told, however, that if we went with a gas-only fireplace then we wouldn't need to rebuild the chimney and it would knock off A LOT of money.  Looks like gas it is!

As you can see, it looks like the chimney was repaired at some point over the years.  Even with the addition to the chimney shown here, the chimney does not clear the top of the roof (picture is at a weird angle).  Imagine adding about 2 more feet to it!  The chimney would be pretty ridiculous looking.

Fireplaces

This is the fireplace in the parlor/living room

Here it is with the mantel pulled off and the insert taken out.

Here is a shot taken from inside the fireplace looking up the chimney

This is the fireplace in the master bedroom

Here it is with the insert pulled out

I suppose this was proof that they were considered hazardous. Inserts were needed because they were built without using fire brick.

Shot from inside looking up the chimney from second floor

Footings

Now that we were able to raise the floors 1.5 inches, we needed to install new columns. However, prior to installing new columns we needed to create larger footers to support these columns. The previous footers were only 12 inch X 12 inch and they started to give way when we started to raise the floor. 

Cut holes and poured concrete to create new footers

New Support Columns

Raise the roof...or floor

The crew tore up all of our existing hardwoods on the first and second floor (again, it was completely necessary and we could not salvage them).  We had anticipated that we would need to level the floor prior to installing new floors, however, we did NOT think the floors were 2.25 inches out of level. We brought in a structural engineer who determined that the middle of the house sunk due to the staircase.  He recommended raising the middle of the floor in it's entirety. The previous owners had installed three I-beams in the basement however they didn't care enough to actually level the floors prior to installing them.  So the engineer said the floors would be able to be raised by utilizing these beams.  

The crew used hydraulics and slowly started cranking the floor up.  The floor had been uneven by 2.25" and with lifting the floor they were able to move it up by 1.5 inches.  The rest of the deficit can definitely be made up in the subfloor.

The red laser is where the floor needs to be raised to

Kitchen with just sub flooring 

Kitchen view from Mudroom

Master Bedroom on 2nd Floor

2nd Floor Hallway

Basement - Raising the Floor

Basement - Raising the Floor