The Basement Renovation: The Finished Product
It took roughly six years from start to finish, give or take months of procrastination and other distractions. The end result, though, was worth the stress. The house is less than 900 square feet, so having a large open-concept family room in the basement is a huge bonus. There is no wasted space down here. Even the fruit cellar has been converted into a finished storage room.
While I originally envisioned this space as a large party room with a bar and pool table, life changes. The largest portion of the family room can be set up as a cozy seating area. A home theatre system can be placed at either end. The bar area is also a decent size in its own right. A fridge is plugged in the corner to provide convenient cold beverages to visitors, or to us when we are working in the home office.
The home office is small, but at 12 feet x 8 feet, it has the same square footage as our smallest bedroom upstairs. There is enough room for 2 large book shelves, one small book shelf, two file cabinets and our computer. It's cozy, but since we don't use it for business, it is more than adequate. And with a lockset on the door, we can control access to the room when our daughter is older.
The suspended ceiling is higher than the one that was originally there, and with recessed lights (on dimmers), there is plenty of headroom and light. The cool green walls are fresh. This is definitely not the cave-like basement typical to so many homes from its era.
I am very pleased with the final product, and I do believe that I have earned some bragging rights!
- « previous
- 1Condition of the basement, stripping the walls and tackling the moisture problem
- 2Designing a floor plan that works. Comparing the existing floor plan with my renovation
- 3Some of the unique challenges in my basement included working around an existing window
- 4A sloping floor presented a challenge when we installed doors. Mistakes were made and lessons were learned.
- 5The stairs were located right next to the block exterior wall, but I was still able to add some insulation and drywall
- 6Finishing the wall beside the stairs and finding a new use for an old milk chute
- 7Finding a new use for the space under the stairs led to the discovery of a rotted supporting post
- 8Replacing the rotted supporting post and finishing under the stairs
- 9Dealing with plumbing, ducts and support beams
- 10Turning the root cellar under the porch into small work and storage room.
- 11Replacing the double laundry tub with a single opened up a little more space in the laundry room
- 12With our baby due in about a month, it was time to get the basement finished so we could make room upstairs for the nursury
- 13The completed project, doubling the living space in our house
- 14A look at how the basement evolved during the project
- next »
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