It started yesterday at eight a.m. Pound Pound Pound. BOOM BOOM BOOM. BIP BIP BIP. RATTABATTA RATTABATTA RATTABATTA BZIP! BZIP! BAM. And on. And on. And I thought the same damn thing everyone else on the block was thinking:
Man, that sounds expensive.
Or maybe I was the only one thinking that. I knew exactly what was going on whereas some of my neighbors might have thought we were finally being overrun by Tyrannosaurs in steel boots. We shouldn’t have put off packing that go-bag, they were thinking.
What was going on was a gruff and humorless older dude with a backhoe and a jackhammer was demolishing the concrete stairs leading into the basement next door. Theoretically, he plans to replace them.
We bought the place over twenty years ago with no intention of ever renting it out to a bunch of icky strangers. We were planning to stick my sister in it. But she never made it and so now here we are, landlords for God’s sake, nothing any reasonable person would aspire to. I’ve been a renter, and not one of the good ones. I know how they can be.
Anyway that has all worked out more spectacularly than anyone could have imagined, and over time we’ve made improvements. Sensible things. New kitchen. Thermal windows. Flooring. A nice fence.
Which leaves the basement. It was a perfectly good concrete basement. Not huge, but nice and cool. There’s plenty enough space to store stuff and the laundry room is down there too. But I have a great fondness for underground living space. In essence, I am a bald marmot. I wanted it spiffed. You’d have to be nuts to bother. But I think every house should have a basement because come the heat apocalypse when the grid collapses it will still be comfy. I’m drawn to low-tech energy solutions.
Ever heard of the Winchester House? The Widow Winchester was also nuts. She had boatloads of ill-gotten money from her late husband the gun-monger and she felt the need to build a house continuously so that the carpenters’ noise would scare off the ghosts of people killed by her husband’s rifles; in the process she introduced oddities and bafflements like stairs leading to nowhere, just to confuse any ghosts who did make it through. None of this was true but it does sell tickets and it is a mighty odd house. The stairs to the basement in our rental are every bit as odd and so we feel exactly like the Widow Winchester except for the money part.
The basement stairs went all the way down to the door—with no landing—and you had to bend over to use the key. Once you open the door, you discover the final step is inside the room. Ha ha! I’m not sure if any ghosts are deterred but it sure could do a number on a drunk.
I’m trying to imagine the thought process here. Someone had to have formed up these stairs. Clem and Roscoe. They’ve dug out just about as much dirt as they ever cared to. “Looks about right, Clem. Whaddya think? Seven steps gonna do it?” Clem aims an upright thumb at the basement door and squints. “One, two, three…shoot, Roscoe, I reckon we can do it in six, and Bob’s yer uncle!” They form up the stairs and start pouring concrete until the bottom riser gloops right up against the door and then Roscoe is all “Uh-oh.” He opens the door and sees that he is still a foot higher than the floor.
Clem scratches his stubble. “Aw, we can make it work, Roscoe. We just pour one more step inside, and cut the bottom of that door off.”
Roscoe slapped his hat against his knee. “Dang it, Clem, you tiny shit, fine for you, but anyone over five foot three is going to have to bend in half just to get inside.”
“Naw.” Clem held his hand above his head. “The door will be a little short, but see, we can frame up the door-hole and just cut out a space in the ceiling here so there’s room for it to open up. You’d only have to duck a little.”
As it happens, this arrangement does not meet modern code.
What with one thing and another, nothing about this project makes financial sense. But I’ll tell you one thing about me and my marmot brethren and sistren. Come the apocalypse, we’ll be cool.
Our house used to be my mom’s, and Paul and I lived in an apartment over the garages when we first moved in together. When she died, we moved into the house and fixed the apartment with the intention of renting it out. Well, it only took one tenant to disabuse us of that notion. People are different than they were when my mom used to rent it out. So for a while, Paul used the apartment for his woodworking shop and music studio. So now it’s filled with woodworking equipment in one room, wood in another, and a drum set and keyboard in another — none of which gets used anymore.
Both the house and the apartment are not up to code, if there even WAS a code back then. On occasion, when we would need a drain snaked, one of the large plumbing companies would give us a line about they can’t do that because it’s not up to code. They would have to replace the pipes to bring it up to code. Needless to say, that was bull. We found a plumber who works for himself, and he has no problem snaking it. Which needs to be done every year or so, but is still cheaper than replacing everything.
I’ll bet there were always rotten tenants. Don’t ever rent a place to me, for instance, or lend me any tools.
Yeah… there was Marvin, who left the bathroom in such a mess that it had to practically be sandblasted. (I’ll leave WHY to your imagination.) And there was Gloria, who had a Just on the cusp of puberty child named Michelle. Yeah… you can’t flush pads!!! She had to have the sewer line from there replaced! Renting out is a nightmare!
What is this ‘code’ you speak of?
It’s a secret, I think.
Probably the DaVinci code.
When we moved into our 1890’s house (Wisconsin glacial till) a basement vertical support beam (tree trunk) was sitting on top of a rock in the floor. Clearly tired of digging. The well pump is in the house. They did what they had to do. We try not to think about explaining this if we need to sell. Definitely not a cookie cutter house
Wow. Puts me in mind of that Dick Van Dyke show where they buy a house with a giant boulder in the basement.
Clem and the Tiny Shits must have built quite a lot of basement steps back in the day. Iʻve seen a few and I donʻt even live in your state (as it were.) Good luck to you and all the marmots.
We marmots are busy makin’ jam and hangin’ gingham curtains.
“…but it sure could do a number on a drunk.” And you know this, how?
I’m sure she’s done extensive research. She’s a professional!
I don’t remember.
The house on the corner was built at Sunset HS and moved to its present location, recently they actually got a car (Yugo) in the garage, sideways! The old neighbor across the street added a large room on a concrete slab with no permits and did all repairs himself. His wife commented, “We had squirrels in the closet!” And the small house nextdoor used to have a lot of parties. So, they moved a sofa outside, then added a “roof,” then walls. Then they asked to buy the house, but upon seeing a new room, the owner raised the price and they moved away—whoo-hoo!
I don’t understand any of this, but it is probably because I am doing extensive research on being drunk while going into one’s basement. (Not so bad, really. But don’t get me started on the attic!)
The house next door to us once was rented out to Ukrainian immigrants whose idea of “outdoor furniture” was a sofa and upholstered chair, with terrycloth towels rotated out on them because of all the rain. They started building huts in the back yard and got pretty far before the landlord noticed.
So this is a basement that is actually below ground level? Like a cellar would be? I always wanted one of those, but we just don’t have them here in Australia. Some more modern places do have the garage as the ground level then the house is built on the next level, some even have a total of three levels. Most basic houses here though are single level.
NOWHERE in Australia? I know there are some areas of this country that don’t have basements, maybe because of too much water. I like basements. I might have mentioned that.
Where do they keep their water heaters… or furnaces… or just extraneous stuff? Yes, it takes on water, but it also comes in handy when we get tornado warnings.
We had one of those! Lead from outside into the laundry room. Called it the hobbit door. House was built in the 1930s, and cleaning clothes was obviously an after thought.
Yes! It’s a hobbit door!
“Man, that sounds expensive.” I laughed pretty hard at that.
Folks in Coober Pedy live underground. Maybe too much of a good thing, methinks. On the other hand…opals! (I don’t know what they do for basements.)
All of them? All the way underground? With opals? I’m moving.
I haven’t done extensive research, so maybe some of the really old places had basements but they’d be rare I think. Water heaters are at the back of the house, usually outside, although there are a few that are in the laundry in older homes. We don’t have furnaces, we are a hot dry country and instead we have electric or gas powered heaters either fixed in position in a room or portable, the portable ones always being electric, or we have reverse cycle air-conditioners, which can cool in summer and heat in winter. Some places have wood burning heaters, like your pot belly ones, but most are larger. Councils want to phase those out as the smoke is a pollutant and a health hazard to many.
All houses built after a certain time (I don’t remember when) must be built to strict building codes and any later add-ons must be approved by council before building.
I forgot about places like Coober Pedy and Andamooka, as Bill says, in the opal fields way out in the desert. It gets hellish hot out there, so houses are built underground, or should I say tunnelled out, since the earth insulates them, the dwellings are kept at an even temperature year round. Many are fitted out like any above ground home, with electrics and kitchens etc. I suggest googling for more information.
Honestly, I think in most climates it makes sense to live underground if you can. More and more sense all the time.
When we built our house 30 years ago, I asked for 8 foot ceilings in the basement, and despite the grumbling, I got them. I believe it took one extra course of cinderblocks. Now we have a lovely guest suite, TV room, sewing studio and long-arm room, and it is my happy place, especially when there’s no guests and the TV is off, which is usually the case. The door between the long-arm room and the TV room has glass panels and a transom to let in the light.
You have a long-arm room? swoooooooooooooon
Underground wouldn’t work in flood prone areas. Google Queenslander style houses and see how they are built high above ground because Queensland floods annually.
Some of the older houses in my neighborhood get a basement by digging down four feet, then piling all that dirt up around the outside for another four feet. You then climb five feet of stairs to get to the front porch, but you do, by gol, have someplace to put the coal cellar.