Cutting Concrete

The first part of our major reno project has begun!  We pulled back the floors in our basement, cut the concrete, and added the new bathroom drains.  We did find some old water damage (along with some mold) under the floor and in the wall.  So, we made the call to change the plan just a little and demoed the wall as well.  Now we have some extra work to do, but it did make the plumber's work a little smoother. 

In the end, we'll have less wasted space and a little bit bigger family room.  It was an easy call to make, since I was already halfway to making it anyway.  The additional family room space will make the angled corner disappear, the bookshelves will line up with the chase around our main vent stack, and we'll still have plenty of space for the bathroom.

Placing New Drain Lines

Since the four new drains run under our concrete slab, we have a lot happening in the new space.  Each fixture is getting vented, and the plumbers were able to move the floor drain for the slab into the bathroom itself.  Now the hallway access can be as large or small as we decide to make it.  Thankfully, I don't have the flooring for that area cut or prepared yet.  We still have a lot of flexibility with how we execute that part of the plan.  The biggest thing I have now is exact placements of all the drains and vents so those can get neatly tucked in the walls.  

The other thing we added, as required by modern codes, is a backwater valve.  What this does, is prevents water from backing up from the sewer line into the basement.  Then if there is ever an issue with our sewer -or sometimes a problem at the street- our basement is protected.  It also provides an easy access to cleaning the main sewer line if we ever do get a blockage.  We are very lucky that our line is cast iron from the house to the city's main sewer without any clay pipe.  That makes maintaining our sewer line much easier, and it is far less likely to fail due to tree roots or high impacts from road work.  Since we had our drains cleaned a couple years ago, it's still in really great shape!  

New Concrete and Next Steps

Now that the drains have been backfilled and new concrete is poured, it's on me to get the new walls framed!  Then, I can get the family room put back together, and the kids can have one of their main play spaces back too.  In the bathroom, next steps will be running the electrical and the supply lines for the plumbing. Hopefully, we can get this room wrapped up efficiently with the work I'm putting in too.  It looks a little chaotic, but we're getting the space to be exactly what we need it to be.