Sounds like finishing the basement will give you a nice chunk of living space..just look at it like any home buyer would..unless you know you're staying there forever..make sure there's a family room, bathroom, a bedroom and/or an office..these are the things that's attractive when selling. I've looked at tons of homes in my travels around the globe and it's much nice to have some actual rooms instead of just an open space. Just my Best of luck with the remodel.
Where I live, very few homes have basements for we live close to the Gulf. But I remember years ago when I was kid, a friend of my mother's had a basement in her house. It was a huge house built back in the 1920's. The house was demolished 32 years ago to build a lumber store on the property.
Great suggestions, and I have no doubt those things would add to the resale value, but... 1) We're planning on raising kids here and we have no other large open spaces in the house. 2) Having bought at exactly the wrong time in Michigan, we're still "under water" on the mortgage. So pretty much we're in this house for the foreseeable future, which isn't a bad thing because we love the house and it's in a great neighborhood. Plus, it's all going to be drywall so adding rooms later will be a piece of cake. We're building a larger than normal utility area that can easily be cut in half to make a bathroom later, and a section at the back of the large living area that could be turned into another room/office.
Finished my basement mostly by myself about 2 years ago. We decided that it was either finish the basement for more room or move to a larger house. Finishing the basement was a much cheaper option than moving so I decided to tackle it myself. I'm pretty handy and can handle most home projects but I had never taken on something this large and had no prior experience but my motto is that I always try to do something myself and if I get into a mess then I call a professional to fix it. I designed the layout myself and the goal was to give everyone their own space. I wanted an adult section that I can watch TV with family and friends and also display a few transformers. A space for the kids to play and a space for my wife to scrapbook. I repaired a few cracks in the foundation, drylocked them, framed it all out myself, installed the insulation, hung the drywall, painted, daisy chained the electrical and high hats, installed the drop ceiling, fixtures, tiled the washer dryer area behind the bi-folds and hung some doors. I had a professional come in and mud the drywall since that is finish work and he helped me with a few other things to finish up since my second child was on the way and I was running out of gas after 6-7 months of working on it. I also built an exercise/office room off to the side which is behind one of the closed doors and off that room is the storage room so we have plenty of space for things we aren't using. The finished space is perfect for our needs and is very open. It allows me and the wife to watch the kids while they are playing and we can still continue to do our thing. The kids also enjoy running from end to end and they can just be "kids" down there and we don't have to worry about them breaking anything in the "formal" part of the house upstairs. It was labor intensive and I finished in about 7 months just before my second girl was born. I have such a sense of satisfaction each night I go down there knowing I did it myself. I spent about 9k for the entire project, including materials, paying the professional for mudding and a few other things, a 10 pound microbial carpet pad, carpet and installation, plus my TV/surround system and all furnishings. These picks were taken shortly after I finished and the kids play area now has kitchen sets and has more fun things for them. The empty corner by the stairs is my wife's scrapbooking section and she has a nice L-shaped desk all decked out do do her thing. We have curtains on the windows and my adult section has a detolf display case on each side of the TV to display some of my collection. Totally worth it and I hope you get as much joy out of your basement as my family does!
Duuude! Thank you so much for the write-up and pictures. Gives me some ideas for our space. What's the square footage on your basement and what's that on the poles? I was thinking we'd have to build boxes around ours, but whatever you've got there looks pretty nice.
Don't have a basement, and im a bit upset about it. It's a good idea though, that drywall soaks up bacteria poopy disease water like a sponge.
No problem. The three sections of the finished part I think ended up about 450 square feet. That doesn't include my office/exercise room, storage area, washer dryer area and the two closet spaces that are behind the other two doors. Since the joist support was kind of in the middle of the space, I didn't want to build it out even more and attract more attention to it by boxing it out so I found a product at home depot called Pole Wrap. It's a flexible oak product that you can cut to your desired width and height, then you use construction adhesive to adhere it to the pole. Then you can by the upper and lower cap as well to finish it off. It's much more expensive than just boxing out the pole and drywalling it but I think it works much better. Plus it's rounded so if a kid bumps into it (which they already have) they aren't going to slam into a corner and bust their head open. The wrap and the cap kit cost me about $85. Best of luck and post pics when you're done. Mark
not going to lie I was kinda expecting this to be about some wacky purchase or one massive hooker,booze gambling binge
Dropped over 40k on transformers in the last 3 months. From like 20 some odd G1's to 1000+ in my collection. Not to mention nearly 1.5k on shelves.... Does that count?
Mark94, that's a great looking basement!! As for the 23k, just think of it as a good investment to keep your stuff in your basement safe and your foundation in good condition. My girlfriend's parents have had to wetvac up their basement every night this week with all the heavy rain we got here in MO. It really sucks to have to do that.
