/diy/ - Do It Yourself » Thread #894358

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76KiB, 800x600, tinyhouse vs basement partition.png

Tiny house vs. finish my parents' basement

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 21:38:13 No.894358 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894904

Hi /diy/.

I'm a NEET with about $10,000 which I'm willing to spend on expanding my living space. I currently occupy a very small bedroom in my parents' home. While I intend to keep using this bedroom to store my belongings, I thought it would be nice to spread out a little as well (I would like to buy a sofa and maybe have my own bathroom).

So, I have two ideas. Either I build a tinyhouse in the backyard, or I build a partition for myself in the (presently unfinished and possibly structurally unsound) basement. Both ideas come with their pros and cons of course as I explain in pic related. Which one do you guys think I should pick?

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 22:35:38 No.894378 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894396 >>894407

I'm going to wager that your parents basement is not structurally unsound, at least not to the point where you would want to live in a cuckshed in the backyard.

Finish the basement. You'll have more room, electricity, plumbing, heating and cooling. I'd make 3 rooms, a bedroom, a living room, and the room with the washer/dryer/furnace. Once you have a plan, frame your walls, wire them, hang the drywall. You can also drywall the ceiling for a really finished feel, maybe get some acoustic tiles for the ceiling.

I'd do the floor with either a linoleum/laminate or (if you're up to it) tile. Many basements have minor leaks, and carpet gets super nasty fast.

Problem is, as a neet, you likely haven't developed most of the skills needed for this sort of work, so it will take a while. You might even want to shell out a few hundred $$ for an electrician, because fucking up the wiring is a fast ticket to being a homeless neet.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 23:28:24 No.894396 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894399 >>894416

>>894378
Thanks for your reply. You're right, the cuckshed is more trouble than it's worth. As for the basement, maybe I'm being paranoid. We did have the entire house inspected last year although we have some doubts about the guy's lack of bias. But looking at pic related, doesn't that make you a little uneasy? I'm worried those cracks fanning out from the footing and that the pillar seems to be inching away from the center. I'm concerned that any substantial load nearby will only cause it to move even faster.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 23:33:31 No.894399 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894431

>>894396
the pillar isn't significantly moving away, check the paint. It's still whole.

The whole pillar and footing is sinking though. That could be remediated though, but that'd be most of your 10k.

It's also probably not a pressing issue yet. Without an engineer analyzing soil and shit and figuring out why and when, your house could collapse tomorrow, or it could go 30 more years without a problem.

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 23:43:59 No.894407 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894435

>>894378
>Problem is, as a neet, you likely haven't developed most of the skills needed for this sort of work, so it will take a while. You might even want to shell out a few hundred $$ for an electrician, because fucking up the wiring is a fast ticket to being a homeless neet.
it shouldn't cost that much for a few outlets and a ceiling fan/light

Anonymous

Anonymous Tue 27 Oct 2015 23:52:59 No.894416 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894421 >>894431 >>894822

>>894396
This shit is "easy" to fix:

1. Put in temporary post (2 posts would be best, on on either side of the current column). Just use 6"x6" lumber
2. Place bottle on top of post. Get these from Harbor Freight.
3. Jack up house a tiny be (it's probably sagging)
3a. If not sagging, just jack until it makes contact and applies pressure.
4. Knock out column
5. Rent demolition saw with masonry blade
6. Cut out 24"x24" square with the column pad in the center
7. Use sledge hammer and bar to get concrete out
8. Dig the sub flooring up, it's obviously shit. Dig down 12"
9. Pour in gravel and compact by hand. Do ~2" at a time.
10. Stop backfilling when the hole is 8" deep
11. Cut rebar to fit in the hole, make a crisscross pattern
12. Mix concrete
13. Place concrete. PROTIP: you don't "pour" concrete.
14. Let cure
15. Put in new column

This will cost you probably around $500.

This is probably completely unneeded. The house hasn't gone anywhere and will continue to not go anywhere. If you notice sagging, then it's time to do open heart surgery on that sorry excuse for a concrete slab.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 00:04:34 No.894421 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894431 >>894822

>>894416
Cont.

A. Don't forget to return bottle jacks to harbor freight.
B. Make sure you get bottle jacks. Automotive jacks move horizontally while going up.
C. If more than one column is doing this, buy enough posts and jacks to do them all at once. This will same money on the saw rental.
D. There is a reasonable chance that the shitty rat slab (term for a concrete floor that was poured in a hurry that is usually too thin and was down with a structure overhead.) doesn't have any reinforcement bar or wire in it. That means you could just a hammer drill (a real one, this niggers weigh around 25 pounds) to drill holes instead of cutting. You could then attach a chisel to break the parts inbetween the holes. Renting a hammer drill will be cheaper and they are electric. Most demo saws are gas powered.
E. There is an even slimmer chance that the slab is thin enough to cut with a [large] circular saw and a masonry blade. You'd need to go in small increments and clear the cut between passes with a vacuum or compressed air.

Unrelated: putting a bathroom in will be a pain in the dick. The sewer line probably comes in way above the floor level of the basement. This means you need an "upflush" toilet to literally pump your shit UP to the sewer line.

Similar problems with a shower and sink. An "easy" way to get around that would be a tank (~30 gallons) and a sump pump. The floor of the shower would still need to be above the top of the tank. Or you could cut a hole in the floor to get the tank lower. I don't recommend using this tank idea for a toilet.

Another problem: no egress. That's super illegal and dangerous. I'd be more worried about not being able to get out of the basement in an emergency than the house falling on top of me.

Here's a better solution:

Get a fucking job and move out. No really, everything you're considering doing is a waste of time and money.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 00:26:13 No.894431 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894435

>>894399
>The whole pillar and footing is sinking though.
I really have no idea as to what the cause could be. A pyrite report was done a few years ago and I believe it came up clean. We don't live in a floodplain either so it's really quite a mystery. Hiring an engineer and dealing with structural repairs is likely beyond my budget and my parents' as well.

>your house could collapse tomorrow
I like to remind my parents that the beam supporting our house has several large checks and seems to be a little off-colored on the underside, as if a slight mold problem were beginning to form.

>>894416
>>894421
Goodness. Thank you for your reply. I would love to do everything you said (heck, I'm itching to renovate this house top to bottom), but I don't want to take the risk of repositioning pillars and jacking up a structure on a property that isn't mine.

>The house hasn't gone anywhere
That's more or less true, at least not in the year and a half that we've lived in it.

>sagging
The sagging in the basement floor is major, I would say on the order of 4 or 5 inches every 10 feet.

>it's time to do open heart surgery on that sorry excuse for a concrete slab
Agreed. But again, my great fear is fucking up and bringing the entire house down.

>rat slab
That's probably what it is. There are really two sections to the basement, one is more like a crawlspace and clearly has very old concrete. It's dirty, but it's not cracked or sunken, and must be at least one foot lower than the other section. The other section is what I've described. It's got this fresh coat of paint you see in the pictures but it's sunken and cracked rather badly.

>sewer line probably comes in way above the floor level of the basement
I don't know. The main outgoing sewage pipe for the entire house goes vertically into the ground from the upper floors without any pumping equipment. And this is even in that lower half of the basement mentioned above.

(Cont.)

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 00:38:00 No.894435 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894603

>>894431
>no egress
Funny story about that. It seems the previous owners had a break-in in the 90s and got rather jumpy as a result. The basement does have windows, even ones large enough for me to climb out of, but they were covered with bars and locked. We don't even live in a ghetto at all.

>everything you're considering doing is a waste of time and money
Maybe Anon, maybe. There's just something alluring about the prospect of expanding my territory without paying property taxes or rent for doing so. But in the end, I can only see problems mounting up.

>>894407
That's what I figured. I would even run the wires myself and let him deal with hooking it up to the breaker and outlets.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 11:58:39 No.894603 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894764

>>894435
Wait, I'm not sure I'm understanding you. You mean the basement is actually 2 floors? And that suspect support column is resting on a concrete floor supported by.... Wood? Rebar?

Also you say the basement is sagging. Do you mean the wood joists above your head, or the concrete you walk on? Either way, 5 inches over 10 feet is not acceptable.

Finishing the space will be cheap, like 3 or 4k. You might want to take the rest of your money and hire a structural engineer.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 13:03:01 No.894629 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894764

>OP spends 10k fixing up his parent's basement
>They sell the house come spring due to the extra 1,000 sq ft of finished space

>OP spends 10k fixing up his parent's basement
>Parents die the week after and the house was not full paid for

>OP spends 10k fixing up his parent's basement
>OP's parents lose their jobs and the house is foreclosed on

OP, go get a shitty job or disability. Use said income to get approved for a rental.

You can easily afford a year in a rental with 10k. 2 if you find a cheap place.

Bonus: Get yourself some government aid and live in Section 8 housing for free or very cheap.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 17:30:52 No.894717 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894764

How is adding equity to your parents house a con? Is there a scenario where you would go "I guess I should redo the basement, I mean the basement crack isn't such a big deal and I wouldn't have to deal with utilities, but I just can't get over bringing up the equity of the house, if it wasn't for that. Oh well, tiny house it is."?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 19:05:45 No.894764 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894765 >>894804

>>894603
>the basement is actually 2 floors?
No. It's more like there are two separate sections with a difference in altitude of about 1 foot. See pic related.

>a concrete floor supported by....
I really have no idea what supports the top section, maybe gravel? It's obviously a much newer piece of concrete, yet it has major sagging and cracking issues which the lower section does not. I would not be surprised to find out that the upper section doesn't have any rebar in it.

>Do you mean the wood joists above your head, or the concrete you walk on?
Not the ceiling. The upper section of the concrete floor (top half of pic related). The concrete in the lower section has no issues, despite appearing older.

>>894629
>>894717
>They sell the house come spring due to the extra 1,000 sq ft of finished space
This is the problem. I'm basically giving them free money which I'm not necessarily guaranteed to see whenever they sell. At least a tinyhouse can be disassembled and taken with me when I move out.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 19:06:47 No.894765 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894898

>>894764
Whoops, here's pic related.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 20:45:45 No.894804 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894898

>>894764
There is much more to having a house than the "benefits" of mooching. Google equity, asset, collateral, itemization.

That's the only way you will ever reach the very popular goal of "not having to eat catfood to survive when you are 60". And don't rely on an expected inheritance... Every one of my friends that did that got or will get fucked. That 10k would go along way toward relocating to an area where you can make some real bank. I moved from the Midwest making $10/hr to the east coast. Cost me about 4k to get set up. Now I have enough cash socked away that the interest alone each year has been enough to pay my mortgage and insane property taxes. Lot of effort up front, but now I have machine of sorts in place that pays my bills. It's gonna be Fancy Feast Tuna Flakes & Gravy ask the way for me when I retire.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 21:10:17 No.894822 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894824

>>894416
>>894421

Okay to expand a bit on what this guy said/add my own opinion.

I work in underpinning and I do this shit all the time. I'm nervous about that weird block that your prefabricated post is sitting on. As if someone had an extra prefab post lying around and poured that stupid stone to accommodate it an not buy one that would fit. Haggard job.

I don't know what a bottle jack is and I've never used one. Judging by the picture I just googled its like car jack or some shit that pushed up a small bit or something. Anyway, I don't recommend doing it the way he describes (maybe I've got the wrong idea in my head of balancing this thing on a 6x6 but holy shit I must be mistaken because that's fucking crazy and you are literally trusting your house to this thing). What you need are post jacks (pic related), and a 2x12 square for each jack you want to put up. You put the 2x12 on the ground
where you want to put your jack, then put the jack post on that, so even if your concrete floor is shit it will still hold it. Each jack holds about 10000 pounds but I know you have no idea how much your house weighs, but it will be enough.

I assume that post is supporting a structural beam? If it is, you need two jacks (or one if the post is at the end of the beam), make sure when you install the post, you have a level handy so its perfectly straight up and down, then use vice grips/channel locks or whatever to tighten the pin at the top, believe it or not this is enough to lift your entire house up, its some crazy shit that someone figured out how to lift an entire house just by turning pin by hand, so take a second to appreciate that. You'll probably hear the house creak a bit, but dont go too fuckin crazy or you'll damage some aesthetic finishes like drywall or plaster on the above floors. Once its in, you can knock out the other post. Be careful, You're going to want to order a new one anyway because the way your current one is done is haggard.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 21:14:14 No.894824 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894898

>>894822

Okay, so like the guy I quoted said, you're going to want to dig down about 2 feet or so and add rebar in the shape of a trampoline with an X in the middle.

Pour concrete up to about 4 inches below your existing floor, then the measurement from there to the beam is going to be your new post. There are certain steel companies that will make them for you. After you install your beam you repour your existing floor around the beam.

I should warn you that its probably illegal to do this. You need an engineer to tell you how deep to make your concrete. I'll tell you right now though it doesn't need to be that strong because the garbage that its currently on is a joke, but this is at your own risk.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 28 Oct 2015 23:40:47 No.894898 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>894824
Did you read the part where he said the concrete his house is sitting on is sagging and cracking, 5 inches over 10 feet?

Refer to >>894765 where he shows the picture of the 1ft high raised floor where the hackjob support columns rest on. I'm afraid there's not adequate support underneath the high section, because it's not likely that a 1ft deep slab was poured. Whatever it is, its not going to be easy or safe for someone who's getting their directions off of 4chan to do.

OP, I'd recommend what >>894804 says and use that 10k to get yourself set up in a good place of your own. Here in Pittsburgh you can get a half decent house for 60k, and there's actually jobs around. If you were dedicated you could have it paid off in 5 years.

You don't own that basement, and its not your responsibility.

Anonymous

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Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 00:05:52 No.894904 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>895134

>>894358

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 04:55:32 No.894967 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>894971

As a tinyhouse fag, I suggest something simpler than building a new tinyhome or remodeling the basement (which won't add value as an additional bedroom due to lack of window.)

Buy a decent RV or travel trailer. I got mine for $1k. Then stop being a burden to parents, full hook ups at a park and lot rent is typically half the price of an apartment. ($305 where I am, apartments go for $700/mo 1br/1bath)

Step up and step out of the basement, you're making it difficult for your parents to pork on the daily.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 05:00:14 No.894971 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>894967
Not that anyone asked but my total monthly expenses which include rent, food, utilities, propane, gas, insurance, and phone add up to about $650/month

Anonymous

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Anonymous Thu 29 Oct 2015 14:48:33 No.895134 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>894904
Two of the midsize units, placed side-by-side would be bigger than my house and one-third the cost

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