Anyone want to share pics of your finished basement?

[alexsmommy]

Especially if it was an older home and you finished it. New homes are fine too for ideas of how to use the space. We are waaaaaay far away from doing this in this economy. Yet, now that DS is in kindergarten the loudness/craziness/rambuctiousness boy factor during play dates seems to have grown exponentially. I am starting to try to get some sort of plan together. We held off doing this when we first moved in to get a sense of how we used this house and what would make the most sense. On one hand, I'm glad we did. We now know that we don't "really" need an office and more running/hanging out space for the kids is more important. On the other hand, we had planned to take out a home equity loan for this since it was going back in the house. Guess that's out the window, sigh. So how do you use your basement?
Edited to add - we have a 102 year old home and the basement has never been touched. High ceilings though, part of the reason we liked this house - potential for increasing our living space by 1/3.

[K-Bear]

I don't know if I am a good person to talk about my basement since I have a newer home and it was finished when it was built.

We moved into this house back in June.

For the most part, it's one big open space (there is a little room that is unfinished and where the heater, water tank, etc. are). All the toys are there. Off one side is an area for what can be a wet bar. The previous owners actually had a bar in that section (that section has tile floors. The rest of the basement is carpet) we have a sand table (better to have a sand table on a tile floor than carpet!).

Depending on how much space you have, we also have a bedroom (it can't actually be called a bedroom, though. It's a room with a bed and closets) and a full bath (not the biggest, but still). That is wonderful for when we have guests stay with us. It's like they have their own apartment down there!

[american_mama]

I have a 40 year old ranch house and we had the basement re-modeled three years ago, just after we moved in. It's 1400 sf, a big rectangle with stairs in the middle, and we finished about 1000 sf of it. We have a guest bedroom (with no window), a family room, an office, a full bath, a finished laundry room, and unfinished storage space.

I'd love to post some photos, but can't do it now, but here are some ideas:

1. We got more natural light by enclosing the room with the most windows with French doors rather than a solid wall and the entry door is a single French door rather than a traditional door. The light does make its way through and everyone complements us on it. I wish we'd done French pcket doors. The kids bang the French doors open and close a lot, and banging/shuddering of a mostly glass door makes my heart race for many reasons. Plus, the doors are usually left halfway open, thus taking up floor space that a pocket door could avoid.

2. For our windowless guest room, we built a false window. It's cut out and framed just like a window, but has the cinder block foundation behind it. We have curtains hanging there and it gives a focal point to the room and makes it feel less like a tomb. I even had lighting installed in it and use a daylight quality bulb to simluate daylight, but we don't use that at all and it was a good idea that flopped. It is hard to wake up there, since you get zero natural light and have no sense of time.

3. Our full bathroom was originally plumbed to be a half bath, but contractors can jackhammer the concrete and turn one drain into two. We couldn't do a bathtub and shower, but all we wanted was a shower anyway. After breaking the concrete and pouring new, our contractor said you never get it perfectly level and smooth so recommended ceramic tile for the floor to disguise any flaws. We did it, I love it, but it's very cold in the winter. You can get under tile heat, but it wasn't worth it to us for our basement.

4. We installed carpet over an upgraded carpet pad throughout the finished basement. There is no subfloor, just concrete underneath, but it feels great to me and since we have hardwood everywhere upstairs, we really wanted plush carpet somewhere. The office is by the exterior door and our contractor recommended against Pergo or simulated hardwoods due to warping issues around the exterior door. So we have nice vinyl that looks like hardwood and everyone is shocked that it's just vinyl. There is some awful vinyl that simulates hardwood and some good stuff, so bear that in mind.

5. Originally, the stairwell had solid walls on each side. You couldn't see into the family room until you walked all the way down the stairs and looked around the corner. We cut out half the stair wall that leads to the family room, so you only have to go halfway down the stairs to see into the family room and it's easier to hear and call down the stairs.

6. All our water pipes and such run along our ceiling. We figured we'd have to access those at some point and/or deal with leaks, so we chose a drop ceiling rather than drywall. We found a commercial product from Armstrong that places the tiles 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch away from each other, so you barely see the metal grids. I think it looks as good as a drop ceiling can look. Armstrong also makes some tiles that look more like tin ceilings, coffered ceilings, etc., which might look good with your high ceilings.

5. What else? Things I really like... a utility sink, lots of overhead light, yellow paint to make you think of the sun, light colors. Things I don't like: hard to hear stuff going on upstairs (including doorbell, in case you have a built in doorbell), have to go downstairs to turn off all the lights. Wish we had a master switch at the top of the stairs.

Feel free to ask more questions.

[C99]

Alaina, I am bookmarking this thread. Our basement is unfinished as well and we have never really talked about finishing it off because the ceilings are too low w/ beams, electrical, and pipes (if we do anything, it will probably go out the back a bit and up). Now I think I need to clear a space down there for DS1 to run around in this winter. It just seems like our 1400 sf house is even smaller now with a 5-year-old bouncing off all available surfaces. Right now, I'm kicking them outside when they get too rowdy, but I am not sure that will fly when there is snow on the ground.

[CAM7]

We built our home in 2001 and then just finished the basement 2 years ago.

The first thing we did was work around the rough in for bathroom...since that is really difficult to change location for. Off of that bathroom we put a guestroom ...includes one window.

We have a 'look out' basement so the remaining windows are at the far end of the 'rec room'...3 facing south and one on that corner facing west. We didn't want to close it off into two rooms since we wanted the light from the windows at far end to reach darker north end. The window end is the play area. The 'darker' end of that same room we use as a theater room... have couch, chairs and seating at that end.

In the middle of the wall of that room there is a small bump out in the foundation and we used that for a mini-kitchen/bar.

Storage under the stairs...

Then we have an extra room that we have a treadmill in ...no windows in that room but we used the double glass french doors so light can come into the room with doors still closed.

For the north end (dark end/theater area) of the basement that did not have windows we put in bi-fold doors (3 sets in large room and then 2 sets in jogging room) and behind it we put in storage shelves. These closets span the length of each room and are about 4 feet deep... they look small when you open the doors but we manage to get a TON of toys and crap in there. We have too much crap lol...

The ceilings in the basement are 9' but we did have to drop ceiling (drywall) in bath and guest room because of duct work. We 'boxed in' the duct work in the large rec/theater room... but it was against the wall and ceiling and not running down the center of the ceiling or anything...kwim? Turned out to be not very noticable.

We left a room unfinished which contains the furnace, water softener, some kinda power panel thingie (fuse box ended up in the storage closet) catbox, :-) and Dh's power tools and workbench.

I drew several plans before we decided on the right one... first few had a small hallway going past the bathroom and into the guestroom. We ditched that idea and just used that space for the bathroom. We did then have to have the guestroom with two doors since it would 'empty' into the bathroom then only. The bathroom also has two doors...

I will try to get some pics posted...

[alexsmommy]

Alaina, I am bookmarking this thread. Our basement is unfinished as well and we have never really talked about finishing it off because the ceilings are too low w/ beams, electrical, and pipes (if we do anything, it will probably go out the back a bit and up). Now I think I need to clear a space down there for DS1 to run around in this winter. It just seems like our 1400 sf house is even smaller now with a 5-year-old bouncing off all available surfaces. Right now, I'm kicking them outside when they get too rowdy, but I am not sure that will fly when there is snow on the ground.

Since our DS1's are the same age, I feel your pain. I feel like our house shrunk suddenly. I've been spending the last few weekends trying to clear the junk out and organize the 4000 bins of outgrown childrens clothes to clear a resonably safe space that I can at least throw an area run in to give him some running space. Sadly, if I put a tv down there, the kids will sit in the ugliest space if it means mort tv time. I just may give in an do it. I am so sick of my main living space looking as though a bomb went off by the end of the day. He's not even being unreasonably messy, there's just not enough space.


americanmama - thanks! You've already gave me a great idea (pocket frech doors)

cam7 - thanks, this all helps me think this through.