Basement finishing in Shaker Heights

Shaker Heights reads the paper before it looks at the dumpster. A recreation room behind an existing basement door is interior work: framing, drywall, electrical, and a building permit through CitizenServe. A bedroom is different. It needs emergency escape, escape below grade usually means a new well and window, and a new well changes the elevation. Once it does, two boards can sit ahead of the building permit: ABR, the city’s architectural board, for most exterior changes citywide, and the Landmark Commission on an individual landmark or in the Winslow Road and Shaker Square local districts.

The houses are Tudors and colonials from the Van Sweringen plan, single-family and two-family; apartments at the Rapid are not this practice’s usual job. Below grade that means a brick chimney whose base is fixed in the plan and knob-and-tube in the joists overhead. Roman Ivakhnenko writes the estimate. Licensed trade partners do the plumbing and electrical. One name is on the contract. Egress, under-slab plumbing, and ceiling height are on the sheet because the city inspects them.

The photographs on this page are from our own jobs on Cleveland’s east side. Each caption says what is in the frame and when. None is presented as work in Shaker Heights.

A Tudor or colonial here has a brick chimney, and the chimney base is a fixed object in the basement plan; rooms are drawn around it. An existing basement bath with no permit history is opened and checked before anything is tiled over, because this housing stock hides baths that were never permitted. Water is measured first; if it is coming in, the drainage is on the estimate before the framing is. Crack injection, underpinning, and radon are outside the scope unless the estimate lists them.

Seven things move the number. A bath and whether the slab must be cut; water and whether drainage goes first; ceiling height to the underside of the finished ceiling and the duct that must be boxed or rerouted; escape by an existing door or a new well and window; grade outside and how the well drains; board time when the elevation changes, which here can mean ABR and, on designated fabric, the Landmark Commission; and whether the basement stays one room or is divided. The board line is the one Shaker Heights adds.