Recommend Your Finished Basement...

[Deleted]

H and I are starting to plan for finishing our basement. We've been playing around with floorplans and are starting to save...this project is still likely a year away.

BUT - since we're in the very early planning stages, we'd love to get advice!

What did you do in your finished basement that you love? Do you have any regrets or things you wish you would have done differently?

Any idea would be welcomed at this point...thanks in advance, MM!

[thedutchgirl]

We love having a 3/4 bathroom. And a guest room. Gives guests their own space.

[yellowbrkrd]

I love our basement the way it is set up. We have a laundry room, a 1/2 bath (that we just put in), a work room, a bomb shelter for storage (built in the 50s), a living room with a fireplace and our 4th bedroom is down there as well. I would have preferred a 3/4 bath but code didn't allow for it because of the restrictions from it being an older home.

[Deleted]

FREAKING JEALOUS ABOUT BOMB SHELTER!

Seems like a 3/4 bathroom is a must, we're thinking potentially doing a full bath, but didn't see the need for a tub, so definitely leaning towards the 3/4.

[mbcdefg]

We have a separate room for our washer/dryer, and it contains enough storage for some holiday decorations and MH's craft beer collection. The room also has a large sink.

Another separate room has the boiler and fuse box, and has enough space to store our patio set and grill during the winter.

There are three closets throughout the basement. MH hung his dartboard down there and bought a shuffleboard table off Craigslist. And he plans to build a bar with a draft at some point.

I wish we had a small bathroom down there, and a better lock for the back door.

[LoveTrains]

I just bought a house with a basement that is fully finished. The only thing the previous owner did which is SO annoying is they sheetrocked/drywalled the ceiling. It looks really nice, but when we want to run wires or figure out where stuff is in the ceiling, now we have to punch holes in it. You might want to consider a dropped ceiling, that way you can access the stuff that is up there.

Also definitely add the bathroom. Previous owner did not, and now we will probably do it at some point.

[chessie]

We are in the process redoing ours after the flood. Biggest thing we are spending the extra money on all mold resistant sheet rock, and water sealant tar for the flooring to keep in any moisture. For us the basement will just be a workshop on my side, middle area laundry room with a toilet in it and other is woodstove area with a tv den sorta section with my gym area.

Ceiling is all drop ceiling, we are trying to finish that up as we speak..

[MrsManners]

We have a bedroom, full bathroom, kitchenette area (right now has appliances only but no cabinets or countertops), wine closet (under where the steps come down), gym and dh's office. I wish we had space for a media room (but we'll eventually turn the bedroom into one) because dh wants it.

[Deleted]

Love the idea of the hookups for the washer and dryer - even if we won't use that, it'll be nice to have.

For those of you that did a gym, what did you choose for flooring?

I have been debating the drop ceiling versus drywalling the ceiling...I can see how it would be really annoying to find everything that's been drywalled in.

Mold resistant sheetrock also sounds like a great idea.

Anyone do a wine room??

[Deleted]

We have the guest bedroom and full bath in ours. Also a living room; it's a cozier TV room than the one upstairs so we use it quite a bit. It's also easier to let dogs in/out from there since it's a walkout basement. I wish we had more room for a treadmill

[chessie]

Nov 25, 2012 17:07:25 GMT -5 @shoegal said:

Love the idea of the hookups for the washer and dryer - even if we won't use that, it'll be nice to have.

For those of you that did a gym, what did you choose for flooring?

Pergo floors with connect mats onto.

[MrsManners]

We have carpet in the gym, but have a hardwood lifting platform that covers about 1/4 the room. If I had known it was always going to be a gym, I probably would have left concrete floors and bought real gym floor mats to cover the entire area except wood platforms for lifting.

We did a wine closet instead of a room...we basically cut out an arched closet and lighted it in the awkward space under our stairs.

We have drop ceilings. They don't look nearly as nice as sheetrock but we've run cable (to the bedroom and gym), network all over the house for cameras, extra drainage for our hvac condensation, etc and we would have had to tear it apart a million times by now if we didn't have drop ceilings.

[Deleted]

We have a full big kitchen, full bath, laundry hook ups in a mud room (we have access outside from here), big pantry, bedroom (with exposed brick) & a family room with fireplace all in our basement. My favorite parts are having access to an extra oven, fridge, pantry & having a couple large closets down there since we lack storage up (until I get a good attic access put in). I rent it to my BIL for now until he gets his business off the ground (he works 12+ hours everyday so he's always gone)--once he moves out it'll be a fun kid/entertaining zone.

[thedutchgirl]

We have drywall on the ceiling and access panels where the tub and other water shutoffs are. Our laundry room and storage rooms aren't finished, so we can still access other things that way.

[mrs.spunky]

We have a full bath, a family room with a huge tv, a gym, and are putting in a bar. We may install a sauna in the future in a corner of the unfinished area.

Our gym flooring is Nike Training Ground. DH installed about 250 square feet of it this weekend in about 3 hrs.

We had to rip everything out of our finished basement after Irene. We used to have carpet, now we have epoxied concrete and throw rugs in the family room area. We replaced regular drywall with mold resistant and treated the walls with dry lock and the back of the drywall with Zinsser 1-2-3 primer.

[kaylie]

Ours sucks. They left it as one big room, with one unfinished room off the side. There are really low bulkheads cutting across the middle that house the vents, but they probably couldn't do much about that.

If I could rip it out and start over I would do a drop ceiling to make accessing wiring/pipes easier, create two additional rooms so that H could have an office and I could have a craft room, and do a washer dryer hookup. We already have three bathrooms in the house and I don't feel like we need another one, but that's a nice option as well. I would also do recessed lighting.

You might want to check out houzz.com for articles on finishing a basement. I usually get some pretty good ideas there.

[Deleted]

Ours has a wet bar, full bath, a bedroom and storage room. The rest of the space is one big area, we have a big screen, and our office tucked away in a nook. Our exercise equipment is just in the big entertaining area.

We don't have a drop ceiling and have yet to wish we had it. I don't like the way they look.

[dochas]

I recently saw the suggestion of a tin ceiling for the basement. I think it would be especially nice in the gym area. I just dealt with a flood so I can't stress enough the importance of knowing how to keep your basement dry!

[Deleted]

Thank you all so much - I'm loving the recommendations! Cataloging them all right now for our Basement Ideas binder

[SusanBAnthony]

Do me a favor.

Don't put in a urinal.

Even if it is a man cave.

(We looked at a house with a lovely finished basement, except that the only bathroom in the basement had a urinal only, no toilet).

[Deleted]

Nov 26, 2012 13:06:21 GMT -5 SusanBAnthony said:

Do me a favor.

Don't put in a urinal.

Even if it is a man cave.

(We looked at a house with a lovely finished basement, except that the only bathroom in the basement had a urinal only, no toilet).

OMG! Why would you EVER just have a urinal, that is horrible -- though I can't mention this to H or he might want a urinal. We are SO not doing the Man Cave thing unless we turn one of the spare bedrooms into a huge SATC-style closet for me...which will not be happening ever.