I’m not sure sure what this room was ever used for, it had a small slit of a window and a soil floor. In our redesign we’ve dropped the floor a bit to match the rest of the ground floor and added a couple of windows. This room also needs to be split into two, a small bedroom and a mechanical/boiler room with room for a washer, dryer and slop sink.
It’s a shame that the bedroom will be smallish as when this floor is complete we’ll be living here for a good few years while we fix up the rest of the house. That said, small can be cosy. We’ll be creative with our use of space and I’ll be reaching out to my brother Matthew who has been devising some clever under the stairs pullout storage systems. Aimee who used to live in New York city says that compared to the housing there, our ground floor apartment would be viewed as pretty spacious.
Our friend and advisor Derrick suggested that this partition wall could also be load bearing to help support the long ceiling span above, which makes total sense and is why we put this decent footing down, complete with rebar. Derrick is the best.
Due to the footings, the floor of the mechanical room will be higher than the rest of the ground floor by about 6 inches, hence why we added a single layer of concrete blocks. Our experience with bricklaying is next to zero so we made a bit of a mess out of it and resorted to pushing in cement with our fingers, that said the end result was pretty good, plus it’s straight and pretty level.
As temperatures are getting pretty low I covered up the concrete in a plastic tent with a small heater which we kept on overnight. The following day we drilled down through every other block so we could hammer in 10″ sections of rebar which we in-filled with concrete and topped off with a nice smooth mortar – was the rebar and in-fill needed, not sure, but now those blocks aren’t going anywhere. By the way the Makita hammer drill makes light work of the holes, not sure who made the 1/2″ drill bit but but probably Milwaukee or Bosch.
Two comments
1. The room looks like one of those rooms the police uncover when they’re trying to find out where the person was:
a. tortured.
b, murdered.
c. kept in captivity
2. If I was Aimee I’d be more worried about whether there is enough fresh air in the room, than its size. ROFLMAO
Ian when are you coming to visit? Just want to make sure that YOUR room is ready for you [spfx: evil laughter]
Size doesn’t matter if it means you can divert the rent into the house. There is now a chink of light at the end of the tunnel, just don’t make the tunnel longer. 🤣👍🏼😁
Thanks Chris, slow and steady!!! Next steps are windows and a concrete pour for the floor, we also need to work out what kind of heaters we’ll need for the boiler room
Wow I’m impressed. the scale of this project is monumental.
Yes pretty much everything has to be redone on this house, but slow and steady will get us there. Be nice when we have a concrete pour next year.