Excavation - Day 8

The excavation of the basement is complete and the digging equipment has left the building. Here I am enjoying the new basement with a coworker.

I'm meeting with the engineer from Southwest Gas tomorrow at noon, so hopefully we'll get the gas line re-routed quickly and it won't slow up the overall schedule by much.

Click here for all of today's pictures.

Day 7 continued...

Here is our sad tree, which is now about a foot away from a giant hole in the ground. It probably had enough of it's main roots cut to guarantee it's demise, but so far it seems to still be surviving.

Day 7 continued...

Here's the back corner of the basement with the bump out for the window well/emergency exit. You can also see a cross-section of the original footing for the back of the garage.

And just in case anyone is wondering, the reason the exterior garage wall frame is still there is because we have to leave it standing in order to maintain the setback from the original house. Current code requires a minimum 10 foot setback from the property line. When our house was built the setback was only 6.5'. If we tear down the wall, we have to rebuild it 3.5' further in, which would make parking a car in the garage difficult unless you drive a Honda Z600.

Excavation - Day 7

More digging. Most of the back two-thirds of the basement is done now. The hole is about 11.5' deep, but it seems deeper than that in person (except to the professionals). Here are a couple pictures.

Click here for all of today's pictures

The basement is now about halfway dug. This picture doesn't show depth very well, but the dirt wall there is about 10 feet deep.

Click here to see all of today's pictures

Excavation - Day 6

The foundation was saw cut and removed today and the excavation of the basement started...

Click here for all of today's pictures

Day 5 continued...

I hope I remembered to lock the front door...

Demolition - Day 5

The demolition phase is complete now, except for the cutting and removal of the slab foundation. That will start tomorrow, followed by the excavation for the basement.

Click here for all of today's pictures

Day 4 continued...

Here's a picture of the back of the house.

Demolition - Day 4

A fence went up around the house today, so the front of the house started to come down. They had left the front wall and roof more or less intact up to this point for security purposes. As you can see from the above picture, the only thing left now is the front door.

Click here to all the pictures from today

Day 3 continued...

Here's another angle, from the back corner of the garage side of the house.

Demolition - Day 3

So this is what the back of the house looks like after the third day of demo. The rear section of the roof has been removed, and all the stucco has been removed from the garage at this point as well. Also, the patio roof over this half of the patio has been removed.

Click here to all of today's pictures

Day 2 continued...

Here's a picture of the rear of the house after day 2.

Day 2 - more demolition

After the second day. there was nothing left of the back of the house but framing. The ceiling was out and all the drywall was off the interior and rear walls.

Click here for all the pictures from today

Day 1 continued...

Here's another picture of the kitchen, showing the entrance into the laundry room (and the hole where the back door used to be).

Day 1 continued...

Here's a picture of the kitchen, post tear-out...

Here is a picture of the interior of the house facing the back after the first day of renovation. The workers started at 6:30am. I asked for them to start earlier (my neighbor likes to get up early), but they said something about ordinances and politely declined. The framing in the above picture used to be the interior of a wall that separated the living room from the laundry room.

Click here for all the pictures from today

Here we go!

We finally got our permits on Monday, 6/15/2009, after a several-month delay due less than competent performance by a structural engineer (What? I have to prove it works using physics? You won't just take my word for it?).

The demolition started at the back of the house. Above is the before picture.

History

This is an attempt to document the renovation of our 1946 Central Phoenix home. Our subdivision was built as inexpensive housing for GI's returning from WWII. I have been told that they are the first tract-style homes to be built in Phoenix (a dubious distinction if true).

My wife and I purchased this home 10 years ago. It was our first home, and when we decided that we wanted more space, we decided to renovate rather than move, since we love the neighborhood and the neighbors.

This is our story...

Several years ago, we decided we wanted a bigger house. We originally wanted to just add a small master suite above the garage, and met with an architect to design it. After getting preliminary drawings, we decided that if we were going to go through the hassle of doing a renovation, we should probably just list out everything that we wanted in a house and let that guide the project. I wanted a basement. My wife (we'll call her Farrah) wanted a master suite. We went back through the design process and after many iterations ended up with the above floor plans.

The first time we showed the plans to our neighbor (we'll call him Gladys), he called it a monolith and lamented that it would block out the sun. I told him he didn't need sun, he got free tanning at his gym. He hasn't spoken to us much since then (though he did feel free to use the dumpster for his own personal use when it showed up - he'll be getting a bill).