We decided to embark on a foundation and basement project
After getting several bids for the foundation, we decided to go with
Iowa Foundation who put in an anchor system in our basement
and also put in an egress window, too!
Here is the before - we had to clean out and move everything
to the middle of the rooms off of the foundation walls.
before
Before Iowa Foundation came, Steve and his dad decided to take down
the cinder brick wall before the remodeling could happen.
Take note of the bowing of the ceiling - clue number one we had a foundation problem.
It went way quicker than we were hoping and were able to
giveaway all these cinder blocks for FREE on a BST site
that day - who knew they were a hot item?!
BUT THEN, we had to haul them upstairs - phew!
all clear!
wall before
wall after - it took the guys two days total for the whole project
(the steel plates were put in every six feet)
this wall before
this wall after
(we only did the two lengthwise walls)
These guys worked HARD all day digging all the holes
by hand and then put the sod back - great work!
They then put the anchor poles in and cemented them in place below the sod.
the after, where they dug and put the sod back
putting in the egress window
window IN!
The workers even hauled and placed all the extra dirt in our
holes by our septic tanks and even spread it out nicely for us!
We also had a "gorilla cover" on to keep it clean and safe!
Meanwhile, all our basement toys were in our living room for a month - ew!
Steve then took down the rest of the ceiling on the other side!
We had Morgan Construction came and built our new wall
to create a bedroom!
It took the crew about 5 days to complete their work.
They put up the drywall, too!
Morgan Construction all put in a drop ceiling,
and put the in recessed lighting in both rooms!
SOOO much light! We only had a lamp before!
They also filled in around the egress window.
And installed the sliding barn door, too!
We wasted no time and decided the paint EVERYTHING downstairs
"mindful gray" by Sherwin Williams - the paneling, the drywall,
and the burlap cemented wall before we put new carpet in!
We also repurposed our air vents, we just spay painted them all white!
Since we had extra paint, we also painted the foundation plates to help blend in.
After we were done painting, we got a call at 8:00 at night
and the carpet guys wanted to come that next day - we still had
carpet in our other room and stairs!
Steve and I spent that evening ripping it out so we were good to go the next day!
The stairs had a TON of staples that we had to pull by hand
which was the most time-consuming, but we got it done that night!
all carpet OUT!
The carpet crew worked for one afternoon
and one morning and were all done!
carpet IN - we got in from Modern Flooring in Oskaloosa
all set up and LOVING IT - we just need to install baseboards yet
(which we are getting from Macolm Lumber and staining ourselves
the carbon gray to match the barndoor and trim there)
