Basement
These are the steps leading down to the low overhead basement. We plan to rebuild them. Other than that, we won't do much, as it's not tall enough to finish.
The original plumbing: lots of cast iron snaking its way down the back wall.
We hired a basement company to put steel plates in the walls to keep them from moving further. It includes a lifetime, transferable warranty against further movement.
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This is the original chimney from the coal-fired gravity furnace. The furnace and water heater now vent out through it.
All of it came out on day one of demolition. See "Bathroom" page for more details of the replaced plumbing.
The outside view of a plate. A threaded rod joins the two, preventing further movement.
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Now on to the inside. Our basement stairs were a problem. Problem #1: The door was 36" wide, but the stairway into the basement was less than that, making it tough to get anything big down the stairway.
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Problem #2: in addition to the steps being uneven, the supporting posts were rotten, the result of years of leakage from the back yard into the basement. When we tore the structure out, we found evidence of past termite damage (no surprise).
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We tore the stairway out, shifted the wall over about a foot, and rebuilt from the ground floor, with several layers of protection against future water (which we plan to eliminate by re-grading the back yard).
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Then it came time for the new stairs. We found Makena Built's video tutorials on calculating, cutting and building stair stringers fabulous, and made the work simple. Stair gauges ($5 investment) are the key to making it easy.
We rested the base of the stringers on a galvanized stud, to keep them off the floor. We shimmed it (lumpy basement floor) and then grouted below to keep it firmly in place. |
And then we added simple pine treads and risers. Because of the limited space, and the low-overhead basement, we couldn't make the stairway to current code (we could only fit 9" treads, when they should be 10"). But at least it's even, level, sturdy and wider. These stairs aren't going anywhere for another 100 years. We still need to paint them, trim out the side walls, and we'll eventually add handrails.