Yes, you live in the house while we dig — sheeting at the stairs, negative air, and the soil leaves through the window, not the kitchen. (555) 049-7284 · dig@headroomworkshop.example
What the ceiling gains
Eighteen inches sounds like a number until someone 5′10″ walks under the beam without dipping. It is the difference between storage and space: a ceiling you forget instead of one you are reminded of by the lump on your head. The stair usually gains three treads; the room gains a life.
What the floor learns
A dig-down is the one renovation that fixes the basement’s worst habit while it is open: the perimeter gets a real drain to a real sump, the slab gets insulation and vapour under it, and the walls get waterproofing applied to the outside face of the problem for once. The room that comes out the other side is warmer, drier and legal — three things the old floor never was.
Services & rates
The dig card
Card rates from the Lorimer Steps seasons, 2023 — 2026. The dig is quoted fixed after the drawings and the soil read — because under every old basement is a decision the house already made, and the drawings exist to find it before the hammer does.
Bench underpinning, per foot$410 / lin ft
Footings carried down bay by bay on the engineer’s sequence — the part that keeps the house above out of the conversation
Slab out & insulated slab in$19 / sq ft
Old slab broken and carted, stone, insulation, vapour, wire and pour — warm underfoot for the first time in the house’s life
Interior perimeter drain & sump$3,800
Frenched to a basin with a lid you can stand on, plus the backup pump option nobody regrets
Egress window & well$2,900 each
Cut, linteled, well set and drained — the second exit the code wants and the bedroom the family wants
Point-load pads & posts$740 each
Where the load demands more than a bench, engineered pads and adjustable posts, powder-coated not painted
Conveyance & cartage$95 / yd³
The conveyor through the window well, the soil bagged at the curb, the street swept — per yard, honestly counted
What we do
Under the house, in three acts
The dig
A conveyor through the window well, a wheelbarrow that never leaves the basement, and clay leaving the house at a yard every few minutes. The dust is sheeted at the stairs, the floors above are protected, and the street sees a tidy yard of bagged soil a day, not a mountain.
The bays
Underpinning runs in alternating bays — dig one, pour one, skip one, come back. The house above never knows which bay is open, because the load always has somewhere else to stand. It is slow on purpose; the sequence is the engineering.
The finish
Stone, insulation, vapour, wire and pour; the drain runs to a basin with a lid; the walls get their waterproofing and their warmth. The room that comes out the other side is square, dry and seven foot nine, and nobody’s paint cans live in it again.
How it goes
From drawings to dry
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Weeks 1–3
Drawings & the soil read
Engineered drawings, the egress permit, utility locates and a soil sample that tells us what the house is standing on and how it likes to be disturbed. The dig is quoted from these documents — fixed, before the hammer.
Week 4
The conveyor goes in
Window well opened, conveyor set, stairs and floors sheeted, negative-air machine running. The basement empties of everything, including the paint cans, which get a polite cardboard box and an address in the garage.
Weeks 4–6
The bays
Bench underpinning in the engineer’s sequence, pads and posts where the drawings call, the perimeter trench cut to the sump. The house above stays lived-in — the work is loud in the basement and a rumor upstairs.
Week 6
The pour
Stone, insulation, vapour, wire and the new slab — one continuous pour, power-troweled, cured under sheeting. The egress windows are cut and linteled while the floor finds its strength.
Weeks 7–8
Trim-out & the walk
Stair extended, well drained, sump lid set, and the final walk with the level and the drawings. The warranty covers the bench, the slab and the drain — ten years, transferable to the next family that argues over the room.
We were quoted to dig out and finish the basement twice and both bids ended with "and you’ll still have to duck under the beam." The Headroom Workshop was the only crew that started with the drawings instead of the price. Twenty-three days, a conveyor through a window I did not know opened, and a basement my height-six husband walks across without thinking. It is the TV room now. The paint cans live in the garage, where they belong.
Lorimer Steps & Kettlerow, 2025 — 2026
The before pile
Six basements from last season. The captions are honest about which photograph is the before — the rooms make the argument without help.
Twenty-three days, no dust upstairs I could find, and a soil invoice that matched the drawings to the yard. The bench underpinning scared me until they explained the bays — the house was never standing on the part they were digging. The ceiling height is exactly what the card promised: I put a hanging lamp in for the first time in this house’s life.
Two contractors told us to just finish it at six-three and put the TV low. The Workshop drew it first, priced it second, and dug it third, in that order, and the order turned out to be the whole difference. The room is dry through the wettest spring I remember — the drain ran all night once, quietly, and nobody woke up.
Our 1911 basement had a dirt floor on one side and a slab from three different decades on the other. They underpinned the whole thing in sequence, squared the rooms, and the sump has a lid you can stand on, which sounds small and is not. The appraisal came back higher than the dig cost.
Asked at the bottom of every staircase
Is my basement a candidate?
Most are, and the drawings settle it in three weeks: footing depth, soil type, water table and the load above. The rare nos are honest — a water table that lives higher than the new floor, or a foundation already working overtime. We would rather decline a dig than finish one the house regrets, and the $1,100 drawing fee is the cheapest no you will ever buy.
What about the water table?
It is the first thing the soil read answers, and it changes the design rather than canceling the job: a higher table means the drain and the sump are engineered larger, the vapour detail is specified differently, and in the rare bad case we say so plainly. A dig-down that becomes a swimming pool is a failure of homework, not of concrete.
How dusty is this, honestly?
Dusty in the basement, a rumor upstairs: negative-air machines, sheeting at the stairs, the conveyor sealed to the window well, and the cartage bagged at the curb. Families live in the house through most digs — the loudest week is the slab out, and even that ends by four. We hand every client the same photo series of a finished stair on a dig day.
Do we have to move out?
Almost never — the work is under the house, not in it. Plan one night away for the pour weekend if the furnace is coming out temporarily, and expect the water off for half a day twice. The utilities are re-routed and re-certified by licensed trades, which is part of why the calendar says twenty-three days instead of thirteen.
Why not finish it as-is at six-three?
You can, and someone will quote it gladly — code minimum ceiling is seven feet for habitable space and six-three fails it in most jurisdictions, so the "finished" room is storage with carpet. The dig makes the room legal, rentable, insurable and pleasant, and it is the difference between money spent and money invested. Every appraisal in our file agrees with the arithmetic.
Drawings and soil reads run all winter — the digging season starts the week the frost leaves · (555) 049-7284 · dig@headroomworkshop.example
Measure the ceiling, then write
Current ceiling height, town, and whether the water has ever been in. The drawings and the soil read are $1,100, credited to the dig, and they answer every question on this page for your house specifically. dig@headroomworkshop.example