A New Bulkhead, Yahoo! (sarcasm)

Our new bulkhead door finally arrived. This is one of the less-fun, required improvements. The old dog-house was really a mess, and a stream of water literally flowed through to our basement every time it rained. So while this will not improve our enjoyment of the house, it will certainly decrease the headache factor.

Recall the old dog-house style bulkhead:


The current situation is shown below. They had to pour a small concrete base at the top of the old stairs down to the basement. It is a non-standard size opening (of course!) so the new steel bulkhead door had to be custom made, and it will now sit on top of the concrete base. The alternative was ripping out the old stairs entirely and pouring an all new foundation down there. The custom door/small concrete cap was the less expensive option.

Note the small deck is now removed from the sliding doors. Long-term we plan to reconfigure this back corner so the exit is in the rear of the house. In the meantime, we'll just place that old rotten set of stairs up against the house. I'm sure it will look great. ;)

Here's the new bulkhead, on its side. It's primed in red paint now, but will be painted to match the shingles.


Like I said, not really fun stuff, but necessary. And also fantastic for insulation and security.