The 30 day basement challenge - part 1 project logistics

Summary – we had to finish a basement in 30 days.  The job itself was a significant learning event since we are a home builder, not a home renovator.  Without a big push by the company owner and some careful selection of quality tradespeople that delivered for us in a big way, the project would not have been complete on time.  Full details from our project analysis and schedule information are found below.

Having watched perhaps too much renovation show on HGTV, I figured doing a complete basement development project in 30 days wouldn’t prove to be much of a challenge, especially for a home building company that generally tackles small multifamily townhouse development.  Our company has finished more than ten basements over the last few years, all with one considerable difference, they were done at the time of construction of the entire project, not as a standalone.  This meant in our experience finishing basements, the framing and technical trade work necessary was done with the upper levels of the house.  The basement was part of the overall schedule, so didn’t have a timeline on its own.  To us, the effort to finish the basement has been indistinguishable from doing the whole townhouse project.

In this instance, the sale of the project (planned to be sold without a finished basement) needed to be changed to close the deal.   As part of the sale we agreed to complete the basement for the new owner at the time of possession for their house purchase.  This left us with a month to get it finished, from the raw studs to the final touchup.

As we prepared a schedule, it became clear the basement was going to require the same level of effort to manage as if it was a small standalone house project. We would need most of the same trades used in our full project to repeat the same work, just on a smaller scale.  The more detailed we looked into the schedule, the less slack we had in terms of lining up every single component of the job from beginning to end, with little margin for error.  Since finishing the job after the new owners took possession was not a desirable outcome, we endeavored to get it done on time, and we had to allocate a substantial commitment of our time and resources (more than we had originally wanted to).

We developed a few key learnings on this project;

·      Weekends can be your friend – we had framing done on a Saturday and Sunday, this allowed the trades to get off to a far better start on Monday than had we not managed to get the framing done on the weekend.  If we started framing on the Monday following the productive weekend, we likely would not have been able to get the plumber to start until Wednesday, and if he took more than his allotted time, we’d have been into the following week to get the rest of the rough in done.  Instead, we had the trades finished and drywall delivered that first week.  This set the stage for continued momentum for the remainder of the job.

·      Lead times for custom material are going to use precious days - so order as soon as measurements allow.  We tend to order bathroom vanities once framing is done so we can get the sizing just right.  In this project had to use the same style of cabinets as the rest of the custom house, so no stock material was available.  It took 16 days to take delivery of the cabinet, this was half our schedule.  We picked up the material at the shop and it was installed that same day, if we had to wait any longer for the cabinets it would have set back our job considerably.  Tile took less time to ship, but it was still a week and necessitated a quick measurement and preorder just after framing was done to get the count correct.

·      Using the right crew is absolutely essential – we used the same crew to hang, tape, and sand the drywall, and paint the walls and spray the trim.  This was a major time saver because we were able to have the basement boarded and first coat of tape done on the same day.  With the need for drying time the zero wait between early stages of drywall was a big bonus.

·      Significant management effort is involved in a tightly scheduled project to keep it on track – this basement occupied a site supervisor/project manager/cleaner type person almost full time for the month long project.  Dealing with getting the floors shop vac’d at key intervals, and the garbage hauled away is a costly and time consuming task.  We had little choice but to tackle this ourselves.

·      The faster timeline allows little opportunity for quality control - we worked extra hard to identify and repair the inevitable bad studs and rectify any issue that would show after the drywall (i.e. too late).  The more experience the company management has with this the better and more professional the end product will be. 

·      Budget is hard to estimate before the full range of finishes can be calculated – we had a rough idea at the start of the project, but the end product was slightly over budget.  The bulk of that additional cost went into the bathroom budget, for tile, cabinetry, quartz counter and plumbing finishes, toilet, sink, tap and shower trim.  We made every economy possible except for substituting inferior materials.