Peter's Pratings: 2nd House Remodel: Basement Part 1

A new house means no projects, right?

After 3 years in our first home, we found it was time to move on. We probably should have waited a little longer and purchased a larger home, but you live and you learn.

We bought a new house this time. It's odd how your tastes progress over the years, but at this time we wanted a new home. It was a spec home, so we were only able to pick the appliances and that was it. That's one of the things we have lamented the last several years, not having the choice of carpet, paint/stain colors, and a few other small customizations.

The most intriguing thing about this house was the full, unfinished basement. The house has a little over 1500 square feet on the main floor, which meant I had just a little less than that to finish in the basement. In total we had about 1450 square feet that could be finished, and we finished about 1300 of it. For a guy who has no background in construction, this was daunting, but I was enthusiastic about the possibilities.

You can see in the first picture below the original basement layout on top. The second drawing was an early design, one I quickly abandoned because it made very poor use of the space available. The arrow points North. On the north side of the stairs, there is a storm shelter, which is actually located under our front porch. I added some storage shelving in there, plus electrical and some utility lighting. This was not part of the available 1450 square feet we could finish.

The drawings, especially the 3D rendering below, were very helpful in visualizing what the basement would look like when it was done. I actually started by measuring to get all of the dimensions, then I used chalk to mark off walls to get a sense of where things might best be placed. I found that it wasn't terribly important to know exactly where each wall was going to fall, rather I was a bit flexible as I encountered various issues and adapted, albeit in small ways, to address those issues. If you have not finished a basement before, you must recognize that a basement will always look like a basement, but the most challenging part of the job, at least intellectually, is figuring out the best way to cover up some of the more obtrusive "features" of the typical basement. More about these in future posts.

Unfinished layout and first design

Final-ish design, North is up

Since I didn't label the original drawing, here is a walk-through. West side is the family room (1), followed west to east by the utility room (2), kitchenette (3), and rec room (4). Just north of the kitchenette is the full bath (5). South of the kitchenette is the small bedroom/office (6), which isn't technically considered a bedroom because we don't have a working window. East of that is the large bedroom (7), with a walk-in closet (8) to the north of it (no door in this drawing). North of that is the workshop/work-out room (9). To the west of the workshop is the stairs (10). North of bathroom is the storm shelter (11)

Some Before Pictures