The first task undertaken for our basement finishing/remodelling project was to put in egress windows for the 2 soon-to-be basement bedrooms. We initially debated whether or not to make one room a bedroom, which would require an egress window and the other a den, which would NOT require a window (and thus less work for us). We finally decided that we would put in a window in each room so that we would have the option of making each space a legal bedroom. This would also help with the resale value of the house if we ever decided to leave Burnsville.

Once the decision of how many windows to install was made, the next chore was getting to the area where the windows would go. This meant removing a good amount of dirt on the west side of the house. The decision in front of us at that point was what implement we were going to use. Shovel vs. Backhoe. As this was our first task in the project our energy level was high, and we were anxious to get started. Researching where to rent a backhoe, justifying the cost, and scheduling a weekend to execute the task was not nearly as difficult as grabbing a shovel from the garage. So, around the September 2006 timeframe I started digging, and digging and digging. To be honest, it wasn’t a terrible chore, but it wasn’t easy either. Rocks, cement foundation and tree roots made for some slow-going. In addition to removing the dirt from the side of house, there was the added question of what to do with removed dirt. Luckily, our yard is spattered with many ares of landscaping and flower beds so the destinations of our dirt-filled wheelbarrow were plenty. But, this unforseen task took time, which meant I wasn’t in the hole digging.

At this same time (fall, 2006) my father-in-law, Bill Fischer, (recently retired) was available and willing to provide a helping hand. Bill’s knowledge of all sorts of do-it-yourself projects would provide us with both the knowledge and justification of doing these projects by ourselves, and correctly. Bill came and stayed with us for a few days and helped enlarge the holes in the earth next to house, prepping the area for what would soon be 2 gaping rectangular holes in our foundation for the windows.

Once the holes were large enough to accomodate the size of the windows, it was on to cutting through the cement foundation walls, which would bring light into a space which hadn’t seen the sun since it was excavated in 1967.

If you’ve ever heard about the mess made when cutting through cement, you have to really only see it to believe it. The amount of tiny-grained dust particles created by sawing through cement is amazing. And despite any and all efforts to contain the plumes of gray dust, somehow, someway everything, and I mean EVERYTHING in the house will have at least a small coat fine dust.

While we were used to inhaling the dust from cutting the cement, we also decided to cut through the block between the finished part of the basement and the crawlspace. Before this point, the only way into the crawl space was to either ‘crawl’ through the 2′ x 2′ opening under the stairwell and dropping 5 feet to the dirt floor, or just recently enter the space though one of the outside window openings.

Now that the window openings had been cut it was time to rough-in the opening with 2” X 8” treated lumber. A combination of adhesive and cement screws were used to construct these borders. At this point we could have theoretically installed the windows, but a couple of reasons lead us to only place hinged plywood doors over the openings. For one, the holes we dug weren’t lined with whatever finishing product would complete the project. We were still undecided on whether to go with the corragated metal lining or construct a brick-style lining with pavers. We could have made this decision and proceeded with completing the egress windows, but another unrelated issue made us hold off. Because we had decided to sheetrock the rooms in the basement, we need a way to get the sheetrock into the basement. Because of the design, and size of the stairwell leading to the basement, there would be no way to get sheets of sheetrock into the basement. The only option would be to use the openings we cut for the egress windows. With winter approaching we were lined the plywood doors with insulation and hoped that would be enough to keep the cold, as well as any furry animals out of the crawl space.