Inspector Gadget

When I last updated, we had finished our framing and were getting ready to start running our electrical. We knew this needed to be inspected, and shortly after that, the building inspector would come and give us the go-ahead for drywall. David and I were both really nervous about these inspections. We had never been through anything like it before, and we really didn't know what to expect. Would the inspector walk around and examine every little thing? Would they tell us we obviously didn't know what we were doing?

With these questions in mind, we ran all the electrical lines, and scheduled our inspection. Much like with the plumbing inspector, you have no time frame for when he/she will come, so David took off work for a day, and I anxiously checked my phone every 15 minutes from work. Well, the inspector came, took a look around (not inspecting every little thing) and not only did he not say we were idiots, we passed! Woo hoo!

After that, we knew we needed to put up the insulation for our next inspection. What we didn't know until David went to schedule the inspection was that we had to do what's called fireblocking. Neither of us had ever heard of this, and David had an hour long conversation with the building inspector trying to wrap his head around it. This curveball doubled our nerves for the inspection and pretty much took away all our confidence. We spent the night reading online and watching YouTube videos about the process and by the time we went to bed, we felt a little better about the whole thing.

Basically, you are making separations to slow the spread of fires through walls and between floors. There are several approved materials, but what we used was fireblocking spray foam, unfaced fiberglass insulation, and 1/2" drywall. We did most of our work over the weekend, then David took some pictures of what we had done to the building inspector's office to make sure we were on the right track. They had a few things we needed to change, but otherwise we were looking good.

 

You can see above where the wall was not flush with the cinder block, we used drywall to make our separation every 10' and unfaced insulation at the top to separate between floors.

After that was done, we put up our insulation on all the exterior walls, making sure to leave any fireblocked areas exposed for inspection.

We had our inspection this afternoon. She looked at the framing, fireblocking, insulation, etc., as well as making sure certain things were meeting code, such as smoke detectors and the size of our egress window in the bedroom. She also made sure we had our plumbing and electrical rough-ins approved. I was fully prepared to get the big old "You obviously don't know what you are doing." but instead we got a big old "This looks great!" I could hardly believe it.

So I got started finishing the insulation in the areas where I had left things exposed.

Things are definitely looking more room-tastic!

We have a little bit of HVAC venting to tinker with, then we will be on to drywall. I just placed our order from Lowes, and since we will be needing just over 2,000 pounds of drywall and cement board, we are having it delivered. Keep your fingers crossed that the delivery men carry it downstairs for us!

Framing Is Complete!

Yes, that's right, friends. We are done framing the basement. Imagine me doing a dance of joy when that last stud went up. My joy was short lived, because we have actually noticed a couple of small things that still need doing, but we will still pretend it's all finished for the purposes of this blog.

So here's how things are looking now, after some good old fashioned cleaning. Cause things were looking pretty messy there for a while.

Standing in front of the bedroom, looking into the living room.

This is looking the opposite direction from above.

In the living room, looking at the doorways for the unfinished area and laundry room.

Laundry room looking to the bathroom. This room was the biggest pain to frame, since there were pipes and water lines allllll over the ceiling. They were inevitably always right where we needed to put walls.

The bathroom with the roughed in plumbing, which has been inspected and approved. The toilet will sit where all those boxes are and the sink will be on the wall to the left where you see those pipes coming out of the wall.

We went to Ikea last weekend and bought our vanity and mirror for in here. We have just started on the electrical by marking where all the outlets need to go in each room.

So here's an updated to do list for down here:

• Finish framing walls
• Rough in bathroom plumbing, get inspected (we just hired a plumber for this)
• Run electrical, get inspected.
• Replace windows (we are going to take a stab at DIY-ing this, eek!)
• Drywall, drywall, then drywall some more
• Paint, paint, then paint some more
• Floor and ceiling
• Final inspections!
• Trim and finishing things like doors, closet, stairs, etc.

David is expecting the electrical rough in to take about a week and a half to two weeks. I am both very excited to get to the drywalling stage (it will actually start looking like a finished space!) and very much dreading it (So. Much. Mudding.).