Hello -
We have an 800 sq ft basement that is currently about 60% finished. We have a few remodeling plans on the horizon, some short-term (in the next year) and a bigger long-term plan.
For background, I'll give a quick description of the house and the long-term plan/vision. It's a 1600 sq ft house with 800 on the main floor, and another 800 in a day-light basement. The basement is about 60% finished, with a concrete floor. 1/2 the walls are concrete, and the other half are sheet rock (pretty standard day-light basement config in the side of a shallow hill). The biggest down-side to the basement is that it was built to have 7 ft ceilings. This doesn't bother me, but in Oregon, you need to have *at least* 7 ft of clearance in the basement to call it "livable sq footage", and we'd probably go with 8 ft ceilings when we do the future expansion (more on this below).
With the prospect of having kids in the future, we'd like to push the east and south walls of the house out about 10 ft for the extra sq footage. That's our "long-term" vision, but we don't have the money to do it right now. This presents an issue with the 7 ft ceiling described above as we'd want to do 8 ft ceilings in the new addition, creating a step between the old and new sections of the basement.
That's the long-term vision, so in the short-term, we'd like to finish the basement and add a second bathroom and convert the dry bar to a wet bar (within the existing basement sq footage). This would require cutting into the concrete floor for the plumbing, and doing some rework on the false-walls.
After thinking about cutting into the concrete floors for the plumbing, and the difference in ceiling height between the old and future sections of the house, we starting thinking... Why not just cut out the entire concrete floor now while the basement is mostly unfinished. I've heard of this being done on commercial building renovations, and seems logically possible.
After thinking through the details, I figure we could demo the false-walls and take everything out of the basement (not a big deal because we're not really using the space right now). Hire a concrete cutting company to come out and cut the floor into manageable squares that I could carry out (please insert any advice here if there's a better way than hiring the concrete cutters).
........ and that's where I get stuck... We would probably want to remove 2 ft of soil to provide the extra ft of ceiling, and enough room to pour the new slab. How would we extract the dirt from inside the house? On the commercial building renovation they were using a Bobcat, but that seems a little excessive for 800 sq ft.
Anyone here have any ideas? Is this a ridiculous idea, or common question?
Thanks,
- Jeff
We have an 800 sq ft basement that is currently about 60% finished. We have a few remodeling plans on the horizon, some short-term (in the next year) and a bigger long-term plan.
For background, I'll give a quick description of the house and the long-term plan/vision. It's a 1600 sq ft house with 800 on the main floor, and another 800 in a day-light basement. The basement is about 60% finished, with a concrete floor. 1/2 the walls are concrete, and the other half are sheet rock (pretty standard day-light basement config in the side of a shallow hill). The biggest down-side to the basement is that it was built to have 7 ft ceilings. This doesn't bother me, but in Oregon, you need to have *at least* 7 ft of clearance in the basement to call it "livable sq footage", and we'd probably go with 8 ft ceilings when we do the future expansion (more on this below).
With the prospect of having kids in the future, we'd like to push the east and south walls of the house out about 10 ft for the extra sq footage. That's our "long-term" vision, but we don't have the money to do it right now. This presents an issue with the 7 ft ceiling described above as we'd want to do 8 ft ceilings in the new addition, creating a step between the old and new sections of the basement.
That's the long-term vision, so in the short-term, we'd like to finish the basement and add a second bathroom and convert the dry bar to a wet bar (within the existing basement sq footage). This would require cutting into the concrete floor for the plumbing, and doing some rework on the false-walls.
After thinking about cutting into the concrete floors for the plumbing, and the difference in ceiling height between the old and future sections of the house, we starting thinking... Why not just cut out the entire concrete floor now while the basement is mostly unfinished. I've heard of this being done on commercial building renovations, and seems logically possible.
After thinking through the details, I figure we could demo the false-walls and take everything out of the basement (not a big deal because we're not really using the space right now). Hire a concrete cutting company to come out and cut the floor into manageable squares that I could carry out (please insert any advice here if there's a better way than hiring the concrete cutters).
........ and that's where I get stuck... We would probably want to remove 2 ft of soil to provide the extra ft of ceiling, and enough room to pour the new slab. How would we extract the dirt from inside the house? On the commercial building renovation they were using a Bobcat, but that seems a little excessive for 800 sq ft.
Anyone here have any ideas? Is this a ridiculous idea, or common question?
Thanks,
- Jeff