The Big Dig: Hand Digging Out A 100-Year-Old Basement
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2020
- We dug out our basement and finished it to add a gym, home theater, and golf simulator. 80,000+ pounds of dirt and concrete out, 30,000+ pounds of concrete back in. Glad I did it - won't do it again. Oh, the gravel and plastic are for radon, not carbon monoxide - and it worked!
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Who needs a gym in their basement when they just spent 740 hours on physical labor. 😂
That's nothing, I installed a new handle on my toilet this morning all by myself
Wow this just made me realize how lazy I am... I think I would rather sell the house, buy a new one than do all this myself with friends
Your children will be 60 years old one day and still tell the story when their dad made "the big dig"
HEY MOM AND DAD, IM MOVING BACK IN. ILL JUST SLEEP IN THE BASEMENT
You are going to look back on this decades from now and say “ I can’t believe I did that!”
I've been a cement finisher for 25 years I know how long it takes to take out old concrete what a painstaking job my hat's off to you
I swear to god, our ancestors were much smaller ! My great grandma was 5'4 or 160 cm, and now when I am in her basement , I need to have my head tilted at all times
I worked as a project manager for an architect. Nice job on your basement. We did lots of basement digs but the one I handled personally was the one I did on a huge lot with a tired old house that was almost torn down. The front set back had been encroached many years before by progress and eminent domain. The house was over 120 years old and the basement was really just piled up rocks. It was so unstable the house was settling bad. I came up with the idea to dig a whole new foundation behind the house. A modern water tight, ceiling height and addition to restore a part of the house that had been dismantled earlier. When it was done we had a house mover slide the house onto it's new foundation. A historical restoration construction company was hired to restore the missing section of the house based on a single existing photo of that side of the original house. All the stone from the old basement was used to cover the new foundation material. From the outside, it looked like the original stone foundation. The front yard was graded and landscaped and a new porch added as per the original complete with salvaged brackets and gussets. The best part is we were able to restore the setbacks giving the house some much needed curb appeal. There was a seperate two car garage on the site plan that was rebuilt and the entire yard fenced. Every time I go back to NJ I try to drive by the house. Last time I saw it, there was a family living there with kids and a dog. It was great to see. Good luck with your project. I like seeing stuff like this.
These are the types of people we need to model ourselves after as a society and celebrate.
Back in '39, I helped my dad dig out a crawlspace into a full basement. It took well over a year to accomplish.
Was expecting a 1-2 foot basement dig out, not what I was expecting at all, not even close.
I was internally complaining about hand digging a trench since and then I saw this video. I joyfully dug my trench today with no griping. Holy smokes! That's a big project. Thanks for the sds drill tip. That is making things go a lot faster now.
Just seeing the bags of concrete move from one location to another caused me to throw my back out. This is an amazing amount of labor you put into this.
I was a basement waterproofer for a decade and I know how much work you put into that. I too have a short basement and have thought about doing this but damn... You're a man of commitment.
I used to be a gravedigger as a young fella and I still remember an old guy watching me smash the concrete top off a grave I had to dig. He smiled and pointed out that by smashing the concrete into rubble I'd made my job harder. He showed me that with some well placed shots I could break it into larger hunks that I could lift out as big pieces which took less time and effort to break and was much easier to clean up.
I'm glad you had an Engineer provide help and there were no issues.
I love your epoxy window!
Huge congrats on the basement man the amount of work you put into that is insane, you must be really proud of it each and every time you walk into it. Thats what is all about man.