My wife and I were planning on having our 4th kid and the home we live in only had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. We are still saving money for a larger home so we decided we would finish our sub basement (we live in a split level home).
I’ve always wanted to do something like this, and finishing the basement would be a great test bed for one of my Live 100 goals which is to build my own house or cabin.
I work in the construction industry and have always enjoyed working on projects. Most of my experience is in the woodworking and carpentry space though. Coming into this project I had never done electrical, plumbing, HVAC, insulation, drywall mudding or doors. I wasn’t too worried about most of those except electrical. However, my brother is an electrician and if things started going South I felt like I could fly him here to fix it all. So I decided I would do everything myself to save some money.
I put together an estimate for what I thought the project would cost and set a timeline; finish before baby #4 needs her own room. That gave me about 8 months, plus my company gave me 4 months of paternity leave so I figured I would have all the time in the world to finish. Haha.
When it came time to plan the project, so many people that I talked to said “just do it without a permit”, but I felt like it was the right thing to do because I work in construction and should set a good example but also because it protects me in the future if I sell this house. So I submitted my plans and the city approved it in March of 2025.
My basement had 2 plumbing connections already in the floor but they didn’t work for a full bathroom. I decided to keep the 3″ toilet connection but install new underground plumbing for the sink and shower. I was a bit nervous about cutting the concrete floor but went for it anyway. I rented a gas powered concrete saw and went to town cutting. I thought opening the windows and putting a fan at the stairs would contain the gas smell from the saw, but no. In fact, very no. The whole house was pretty much instantly contaminated and my family had to leave for the day. Aside from that, it was pretty straight forward!
Well now I had the slab cut and a pathway for the new plumbing. I went to Home Depot to get the fittings for the pipe I needed. I was in the aisle and one of the workers asked if I needed help. I have been weary of the knowledge of the workers there so I asked if she was an experienced plumber. She said yes. Great! So I asked her a handful of questions and she got me the parts I needed.
One of the tricky parts about what I was doing was I had to cut out a section of the 3″ drain line and and somehow put it back in and reconnect it. The problem is, PVC is not flexible, so how do you reconnect it back into the missing section? Luckily, the Home Depot worker had given me some slip couplings. To install those, you glue all the ends of the pipes, slide the coupling all the way over the pipe, insert the new section of pipe and the slide the coupling back over the joint of the 2 pipes. I did all this and thought everything was great. I filled back in the hole with dirt and left it. The next day, I came back and the dirt was soaked..I dug it up and realized that those slip connections absolutely did not work. They didn’t fit properly and water was just coming out. So I tried them again. Same result. I had no idea what to do, so I called my friend who was a plumber to come help me.
As soon as he looked at my install he says, “I’ve never seen these slip couplings, and this sink and shower connection aren’t to code”. Haha thanks a lot Home Depot worker…
He and I got to work tearing out my handy work, aaaand broke 2 more existing fittings in the process. Sooo yeah, had to tear up more of my concrete floor and replace other parts I wasn’t planning on. All the while, I told my family not to use the toilet because it would just run right into the hole we were working in. Well, old habits die hard for my wife when it comes to flushing the toilet I guess, and I got a fresh flush right onto where I was working. Lovely.
Finally, using my own common sense, I got what I felt like were the right parts from Home Depot, not those slip collections and wonky 2 part drain the worker told me, and bam! The installation went in perfectly in a couple of hours, per code, no problem.
With the plumbing in, I poured concrete back in place and now I was ready for framing.
