In our home we have large crawl spaces under the house. One of the spaces is under the sunken living room at the front of the house. The builder had to dig pretty deep in our area to get to the hard pan to pour the foundation. The nice thing about that is he needed dirt else where, so rather than back fill the hole in with the excavated dirt he hauled it away for use somewhere else. This left a large dug out area under the house.

From the day we found this house as it was being built I knew the possiblity was there to make this into another room because of how deep it was down there. The deepest part was about 8 feet from dirt floor to the ceiling down there but it had a gradual rise to it and had to be dug out and leveled. So after living in the house for nearly 7 years the planets had aligned and the time had come to pull the trigger on bunker construction.

Michelle’s Mom and Dad were here for a month long visit from mid December 2005 to mid January 2006 so during that time we did a lot of fishing but some lil projects around the house to keep busy. One fine day Michelle’s dad, Wayne, and I were messing around with the wiring in the crawl space putting in a switch and connecting power to the light for the flag pole outside. At the time this area was being used for storage of “stuff”, treasures, things we “need” and would never throw away. So during the small talk conversation that goes on while doing little jobs I said how this was one day going to be a room and how I imagined it would look.

That is when I got hit with the idea that the time was now to do this project. You see we had this neighbor fella, Kevin Golliff, he is in the Coast Guard and had been stationed in Seattle and was renting a house in our neighborhood along with his wife Lisa. Kevin is a jack of all trades type of guy but knows construction as he has built custom homes with his father who is a contractor in New England. Kevin had already done some projects in the neighborhood including ripping out the island pantry in the middle of our kitchen/dining room and rebuilding it in what is essentially an unused corner as you walk upstairs to the kitchen. It really opened up that area making it seem so much bigger and it made way for new hardwood flooring to be installed which Michelle has been wanting for years.

Back on story now. So I know this is something Kevin can do, the thing is Kevin is being redeployed to the Coast Guard station in Juneau, Alaska in May 2006. And although Juneau is only about 900 miles from Marysville, Washington……it is to far to commute to do this project so I needed to get this rolling and rolling fast if it was to come to pass. As luck would have it, Mr. Jack of All Trades was in my driveway replacing my rear breaks on my truck (I told you he was a jack of all trades). I wandered outside, it was a nice January day in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and asked if he had a minute because I wanted to show him something.

After bringing Kevin up to speed on my idea and him looking the space over he said, “no problem, piece of cake”. From that point the ball started to roll. Kevin took measurements and made a preliminary list of all the materials that would be needed for construction and we went shopping. In the mean time the area needed to be dug out. That is hard work so I hired the strong backed 21 year old neighbor kid, Jonathon Westerfield. He worked his tail off digging that hard packed dirt out of there and moving it all to the far back corner and spreading it out. His tool for dirt transport was an old Radio Flyer wagon, the best wagon ever made. Jonathon got it finished and was paid along with a bonus for his hard and quick work. He was worth every penny with out a doubt.

Now, the shopping trip. At the time I was working swing shift but when I worked a weekend I would work my normal noon to 10:30 pm shift and then return to work at 3:30 am 5 hours later. If I had to work on a Saturday, I wanted it to be over and done with so I would have the weekend with my family. So I would get about 80 minutes of sleep but I never had a problem with that, especially on shopping day! I met Kevin at the Lowes in Everett just after noon when work was done and the shopping commenced. Oh man it is fun buying all those materials……..right up to the time you have to pay! But I whipped out the Alaska Airlines Visa and added over 2000 miles towards a free future flight on a fine Boeing 737.

Construction started almost immediately with Kevin coming over for a few hours each late afternoon after work and Jonathon digging in the mornings before he had to go to work and or school. Once the big dig was done it was time to put in the floor. That was a 16 hour day as I started at 8am rerouting the duct work and drove the final screw into the sub floor just at midnight. What a day that was but the room became just that with a floor.

Construction was from January 11 to February 21 2006 with a total construction that took 23 actual work days of various hours from the start of digging to the pine paneled walls. After that carpet was installed and a custom made counter top from oak plywood by my master carpenter neighbor Danny Humphrey.

The room was totally complete save the phone and computer network hook up by March 1. Never pay your contractor in full before the job is complete, you’ll never see them again. At least with a tool in hand to finish the job. But I love Kevin all the same for the work he did.

This room added approximently 248 square feet to the house and nobody, that doesn’t know better, can tell it wasn’t part of the original build. Many thanks go out to Kevin Golliff (major construction), Jonathan Westerfield (digging), George Utter ( Painting), Danny Humphrey (Counter top & book shelves), The Boeing Company (for poor planning, not having enough mechanics and having me work mega overtime to pay for this) and of course to Michelle for all the odd jobs she did during construction. A brief picture history of the build can be found in picture set Bunker Construction.