It’s been a while since we updated you on the Sport Court, so wanted to share what the process has been like, the decisions we’ve been making, and all that we’ve learned over the last few months.
Before
We started dreaming about this space when we bought our home back in 2017 and after last year, we were ready for some more space.
Over the last few years, Jamie and I would walk around our home trying to figure out where an addition would look best for a sport court. We wanted it to flow with the home and not look like an addition.
We dabbled with the idea of adding it off the back of our home and entering through the living room, maybe coming off of the garage and, in the end, we decided it’d flow the best coming of the west side. So from the picture below extending it off of the right-hand side of our home.
We got to work with our architect, Jennifer from American Prairie Architects last spring and started working on our plans. There were a lot of decisions we made in regards to the windows but love what we ended up with.
A lot of you were surprised by how many windows we were putting into the home, however, our goal again was to not make it look like an addition. And it wouldn’t have looked right had we not put these windows in the front.
Being we’re not building this sport court like your traditional basketball court, and there won’t be any basketballs flying around, we think we’ll be okay. Our goal is also to put a pool out back and want the entrance to come off of the sport court, so we wanted the sliding glass doors in the south side.
Excavating
Initially, we wanted to put the Sport Court off of the east side of our property. However, we quickly found out after an 811 call and a visit from the US Infrastructure Corporation that way too many utility obstacles stood in the way. Specifically a giant septic line.
After finding this out, we changed course and relocated our Sport Court to the west side of our property. We broke ground at the end of November, hiring Scherber Excavating. Trevor and Missy are the owners of Scherber and are well known in the Minneapolis community for excavating. They were in and out in a couple of days, and we had a great experience working with them!
They also hauled in all of the rock and created a road for us over here in our tall grass for all of the trucks to come in and out, so we didn’t have to ruin all of our grass.
It was pretty fascinating to watch this process. I was very much impressed with those clean lines they can cut and form with these big excavating trucks.
And I’m pretty sure this was our boys’ favorite part to watch as well, plus they loved playing on the dirt piles.
BlockWork
Once the excavating was complete after only a few days, we hired Elite Contractors to come in and do all of the blockwork.
Waterproofing, Drain Tile, Insulation
And once the blockwork was done the guys got to work on the waterproofing, drain tile, and insulation. Below is our guest bedroom in the basement of our home.
We removed this guest bedroom and created the walkway into the sport court. And in this same space is where Jamie had to break up the concrete to get the drain tile accessed and into the sport court.
Backfill
Once all of the above was done, Scherber Excavating came back out and backfilled the dirt back into the foundation.
Framing
Framing is where we had a little hiccup and lull. We couldn’t find anyone to help us do the job!
However, thanks to Instagram, we put the word out there and Allied Partners came to the rescue and we hired them to do all of our framing. Another company that was a joy to work with.
They were able to get out within a week or so of sending us an Instagram message and they powered through within a couple of weeks time to get all the framing done.
Set Windows & Doors
Once the framing was done, Allied Partners was back setting all of our windows and doors. And this giant door was on backorder, which meant, we lived with access into our home for weeks!
To say I was one nervous momma would be an understatement. Haha! But we made it and are all now safely locked up.
Roofing
Next came the roofing, we hired Belsheim Construction to complete this part. We were a little nervous about this phase and again, matching the old vs. the new behind we would assume our current shingles would have some fading too.
But he did a great job at matching the color he also took some of our old and incorporated it into the transition so there wasn’t a straight line to be able to determine where the old vs the new progressed into.
Poly & Heating Fiasco
And then came another hiccup and major delay…doing a build in the winter definitely adds to the overall cost of the project!
Once all of the above was done, next up on the list was to get the concrete floors poured and the electrical done. Electrical has to be done before the insulation goes in, but we needed to insulate the place before the concrete floors were poured so avoid cracking come spring. Which made for a bit of a situation.
So as always, Jamie had to get creative and problem solve. He poly’d the entire space halfway up and then we rented this handy dandy heater that overall cost us an extra $5,000 for everything.
Opened up the House
Once everything was heated and before we could pour floors, Jamie had to open up the inside of our home in the basement into the sport court so that they could ensure the floor was level and poured accurately. This was the guest bedroom that will now be part of the sport court and also our gym area.
Poured Concrete Flooring
After about a week of heating the space and ensuring the rock was dry, Elite Contractors came out and poured all of our concrete flooring for us. I wish I could have gotten some photos and videos of this portion, but they were in and out so fast I didn’t grab a shot. And once those floors were poured and dried, the guys were already covering them up to protect them in case we keep the concrete and also for ease of cleanup at the end.
Electrical, HVAC & Plumbing
Next, it was time to get the place heated and get our rough-ins done! We use Accurate Electric and Glacier Plumbing for these services.
They are our go-to for all of our jobs. Dan, who is the son of the owner of Glacier Plumbing, happens to be Jamie’s brother-in-law.
We love and trust these guys (neither have websites or I’d link to them) and wouldn’t use anyone else but them. So once we got through the above obstacles, this process was a breeze.
One of the big things we made a decision on was the electrical plan and incorporating Caséta by @lutronelectronics smart lighting control into this space too.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know one of our favorite products of theirs are the smart dimmer switches with the smart bridge. We have them throughout our home so it was a no-brainer when chatting about our sport court plans and the style of lighting that we wanted. With all of the windows in this space, we know we’ll adjust the lights throughout the day non-stop.
Insulation
UZ Insulations is another company we use in our construction2style client projects. We got a lot of questions on why we didn’t use spray foam and the reason came down to cost for us. Being we had some other unexpected costs come up, we were saving in places as much as we could, where possible.
Once the insulation is in, drywall is hung, and the mudders and tapers are cruising on our sport court, we always lay @trimaco_inc for flooring protection. It’s a necessity to keep all of our floors protected and also makes the clean-up a lot easier.
Drywall
Premium Drywall is who we use for all of our construction2style client work and we’re always so happy with them. They were in and out in a few days and everything looks great!
Siding
Siding is in the works right now and we hired Northface Construction to do the job. If you’ve been following on Instagram, this was another little setback because we weren’t sure what color to go with.
As you can see our fascia and soffits are the same color as our home. While we don’t hate it we wanted to switch it up, but thinking about the overall budget, completely redoing everything was out of the question as that estimate from a few different exterior contractors ranged from $40-60K.
So we decided to keep the soffits, fascia south, east and west side of our home the same pewter color as these portions are all vinyl, and then we’re going to repaint the front and peaks of our home, as those are all cedar.
Paint
And it’s painting day today on this fine Friday. YAYAYA! Our painter Bruce and his partner Edgar will be out and I can’t wait to finally move inside once they’re done and do all of the interior finishing work.
We’re still not sure in what direction we’re going to go on the flooring. Whether we carry our engineered hardwood flooring throughout there and lay padding down on areas we need it, do overall padding, or leave it concrete… the debate is still out.
Our Instagram friends all say padding throughout, however, we want a good floor to be able to ride bikes on. So… we’ll see. We’ll be back with more goodness on the inside soon.
Once all is said and done we’ll be back for a full breakdown of the cost. I was feeling optimistic we could get away with $100K, being we’re also contractors and DIY and it’s looking like it’ll be right around $120K.
This means if you hire it out it’ll be around $140K or more, just depending on the project management you’re needing. But we’ll break this down in another blog post soon.
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