Anyone who wants to look directly into the green from the basement of their house, just need to create a little space. With a planted terrace in front of the window, it will be bright and beautiful.
This is how it gets light in your basement, warm and cozy, we promised in the December issue. The first requirement we demonstrated to you, like old ones, draughty windows can be exchanged for beautiful new ones. The second part of our three-part series "Renovating the basement" is not necessarily intended for sun worshipers, so generous though, how we dug the area in front of the basement window, one can speak of a light shaft de luxe: The basement has never seen so much daylight. On top of that, it can now be effectively supplied with fresh air. And thanks to the lush vegetation of the terrace area, the window grants a view of the greenery, as you can seldom enjoy it from the basement. A real place in the sun.
The project demands – who's surprised – quite a lot of space, at least two, better three meters in front of and about one and a half meters from the basement window. If you keep the excavation too tight, the terrace steps become too steep and the whole excavation too narrow – the proverbial basement hole would remain.
In our example, the depth of the excavated pit is 130 cm – measured from the lower edge of the window to floor level. In addition to the window, each step on the terrace could only approximately 30 to 35 be cm wide, namely at a height of 28 cm. The steps are made up of two planks each 14 cm wide. When building the terraces in front of the basement window, a staircase should definitely be planned. This means that the beds remain easily accessible later, they can then be easily planted and cared for. In our case, the stairs are leaning against one of the house walls. That has to do with the special situation of our construction site, because the stairs could do without solid side walls. The spiraling of the stairs is particularly appealing. It takes up the curve of the terrace and visually guides it upwards. Set in wood and lushly planted, the light shaft looks really good.
How to put it on, we show on the following pages.