BILCO BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

SQUEEZED BETWEEN STEPS AND A WALL

Eric Martindale - Sept 23rd, 2022

Welcome to the new blog for Confident Home Remodelers. For our premiere article, we are featuring a flat Bilco install in South Orange, New Jersey that we completed over the summer.

We were contacted by a customer that had already researched the available sizes of cellar doors, and he didn’t know how anyone could fit a metal basement door into this opening. They had a lot of problems

1. Non-standard opening
2. Limited opening width to fit a Bilco
3. Sitting too low, water coming in
4. The door was an old wood board, rotten
5. The door wouldn’t stay open by itself
6. Rotten wood between porch and the door. It looked ugly, and it was rotting to the point that animals could enter. 

This particular cellar door isn’t heavily used, but the customer does a lot of entertaining on an adjacent patio with a built in “outdoor kitchen”. The condition of this opening right next to the rear door wasn’t acceptable. Especially not for an upscale neighborhood of classic homes.

We got the contract, and I ordered a Bilco BR-1, which was the narrowest of their flat models. 

After he signed, the customer told me one guy wanted nearly $5,000. “It’s not worth that much, not even close. He sees the value of this house in a great neighborhood, and he’s overcharging”, I said. The customer was skeptical that I would complete it without any cost over-runs on the contract items.

Here’s how we managed the install:

1. First, we raised the front masonry by adding a row of bricks
2. Then we framed a few 2x4 vertical supports under the porch, and added a large ¾” thick PVC board going to the ground. It can be seen from the stairs under the Bilco as well.
3. Then we framed an opening using 2x6 pressure-treated boards. There are more pressure-treated boards than the camera angle shows, and we had to cut into the cedar shakes on the left side
4. Then we laid down the frame of the Bilco (red), and put a thick seal of Quad silicone underneath
5. Then we added the doors
6. Then we covered the top with another piece of ¾” thick PVC board, which overlapped the top of the Bilco flange. This piece was heavily caulked with Quad silicone as well.

Bilco and the other cellar door manufacturers don’t like it when contractors find a cost-effective way to avoid buying their overpriced metal extension pieces. They look ugly, and it’s just another metal piece to eventually rust and leak. We almost never use them.

And there it is, the completed job. On time, on budget. Both doors stay open when opened.

We offered to paint both sides with Rustoleum paint before installation for an addition $300, but the customer declined. The factory red priming is not intended to be the final coat. It’s much easier to paint it before installation, and it’s better that way because all surfaces of every part can be painted.

For more information, and to review all of our blog postings, see www.confidenthomeremodelers.com  We install cellar doors throughout Northern New Jersey.