Basement Backfill

What a busy week, as usual. We visited a custom cabinet maker. We have collected information from a few different vendors at this point and are still weighing our options. To be clear, we aren't looking for anything "fancy" as my wife calls it, but we do want something that will last. When I say 'last' I mean a cabinet and door that will be structurally sound 50 years from now. We'll have more news on our decision process in the coming weeks... maybe, once we make a decision.

Back fill for the foundation was brought in recently. Also, the steel beam that will act as a new primary structural support was placed. in the pictures below you can see bracing in the basement to support the foundation wall as back fill was loaded into the void. The steel beam is supported by rough trusses at this point until it can be tied into framing.

Having the void filled between the new foundation and the old has allowed us to work in the area where the old kitchen HVAC vents came out of the house. If you look closely at the right side of the first picture above you'll see a garbage bag over some HVAC ducts. They run into the crawlspace of the existing house. We would like to do some work to get into this area.

Why would we want to crawl around in this space you ask?  The answer harkens back to a day when my wife and I attempted to install a water line for our fridge. We needed to run a simple 5ft of flexible line under the flooring. In the crawl space I made an attempt to get to the area where the line needed to be run. It turns out I was a bit too large to fit into that area of the crawl space so I did what any resourceful man would do, I sent my wife in. She was, of course, ecstatic to squeeze into the spider filled, dirt bottom, dark shallow void with barely enough room to take a deep breath. Detect any sarcasm? After that job we both swore that if we ever had the chance to make the crawl space a little less shallow we should invest some effort.


This was our chance.