Basement Door - Progress

It's been a long time since I blogged about the basement door that Trent worked on all summer. I mentioned it briefly in this post. Who knew putting in a new basement door would take sooo longgg. But when your house is over a century old, sometimes it takes 3 or 4 months. So it's time for an overdue update. At the beginning of July, this is what the old, dilapidated, rotted basement door looked like (complete with yellow spray foam insulation everywhere):

It seriously looked like an old door in one of those horror movies. "Come down to the basemenntttt..." Perfect for Halloween. Ha.

Anyway.... moving on, you can tell we never really used this door a lot. But we needed to rebuild the door frame and install a new one that could actually be used for easy access when we start bringing in new floor beams, gravel, cement, and floor jacks to put down here. Needless to say, it only took a couple hits to knock this baby down.

The black cord you see running across in the photo is the cable for the tv. Since we have satellite, we don't use this anymore, but we will probably be keeping it and just moving it out of the way in case a future owner wants cable.

Here's the view from inside the basement once Trent got the old door removed.

A little messy to say the least...but just look at that lovely, not so stable brick wall that the door was built into. Yep, Trent had his work cut out for him with that one.

By August though, he had the new door all framed and secured. It was a tight fit at first, so he had to chisel some of the brick on one side to get it to fit. The doorway is also smaller than most, so he probably had cut a foot off of the (steel) door to get it at the right height. Rest assured though, it now opens and closes with no problem and fits pretty well in the new doorway. He did a pretty good job!

Fast forward to October, Trent's been getting all of the mortar/concrete work finished to secure the door frame to the bricks inside. No water or air is going to escape this door!

If you look closely, you can see that we have an actual, legit doorknob with a lock and key. Never had that on this door before! It's actually functional now, which is nice, and it's getting to the point where we'll actually be able to use it probably next summer, when we work more down there getting the house leveled and some of the floor beams replaced under the house.

I just couldn't resist throwing this picture in there...you know he just looks so happy to be working on this door for the third month now....

All joking aside, though....After the concrete is all dry in the door frame, Trent is going to be spraying the open, wooden part of the frame with insulation, and then he'll put the door trim back on the outside to finish it up.

It's coming along, slowly but surely. The basement is still spooky looking, but it's still a work in progress and we have a long way to go with the whole project! Maybe in the next couple of years we won't be so busy planning weddings and will actually be able to work more on house projects! I'm hoping this winter to get indoor projects done, like the hallway and maybe finishing some living room window trim that we started, oh...4 years ago! We can only hope! :)